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"Wii U&amp;#039;s online capabilities and Miiverse social network will be fully detailed in a future Nintendo Direct video. With less than a month before Wii U launches, surprisingly few details are known about the system&amp;#039;s online plans. Company president Satoru Iwata recently addressed some of the system&amp;#039;s online details in a recent investor Q&amp;amp;A.   The friend code system, which is required for online interactions on the Wii and 3DS, will not be in place on Wii U, Iwata said. &amp;quot;For our past platforms, users had to exchange a number called a &amp;#039;Friend Code&amp;#039; with each other to build a Friend relationship, where data could be transferred between two specific devices,&amp;quot; he explained. &amp;quot;This process was set up to prevent users from being harassed by the few people who like to behave in an inappropriate manner when playing games. For Wii U, as those who have empathized with each other can create a Friend relationship, the important mission of &amp;#039;Miiverse&amp;#039; is to increase the number of friends to play games with.&amp;quot; Miiverse, which was revealed at E3 earlier this year, will replace friend codes on Wii U.  It is a social network for the Wii U where players can exchange messages, join multiplayer games and chat with other users who are playing the same games.   Iwata used the term &amp;quot;empathize&amp;quot; multiple times when describing how users will interact through Miiverse. When Miiverse was first revealed, the example was shown of a player stuck in Zombi U reaching out to other players for help on what appeared to be a game-centric message board.  It appears that this kind of connection is what Iwata is referring to, and through that interaction they may be able to add each other to their friends lists. All Wii U games will be required to work with Miiverse, allowing users to text chat through the network without quitting the game. This is seen as good news compared to the recently revealed limitations for Wii U&amp;#039;s voice chat capabilities . Nintendo has plans for Miiverse to become a much larger gaming social network than just Wii U, as Iwata said there will also be smartphone and tablet apps, allowing users to interact with their Miiverse friends even when away from their console. Even with these new details, there is still much left unknown about Miiverse. Nintendo has a future Nintendo Direct video conference planned to better explain the online features, though no date was set for the video. Wii U will launch next month on November 18 in North America, with the European launch following on November 30. Photo gallery - Wii U:  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/wii-u/news/a434215/wii-u-miiverse-details-to-come-in-future-nintendo-direct-video/>