Wii U to have voice chat and social networking?

While speaking with shareholders Iwata shared the idea that the Nintendo Wii U could take advantage of voice chat and social networking. Iwata noted that Nintendo could no longer ignore the huge impact that social networks have had.

“As for social networks, after examining the penetration and adoption rate of social networking services like Facebook, etc., we’ve come to the conclusion that we are no longer in a period where we cannot have any connection at all with social networking services.”

Iwata also went on to discuss that the Wii U could have VoIP features. “So, for example with the question of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), I think what we would like to do is work with them on how to enable them to do that. But, what we’re not going to do is to consider as prerequisite conditions that every game includes features like that because obviously there are some developers who may not want to do that. Rather, I think we’ve come to an era where it’s important to consider how the social graph of the social networking services can work in conjunction with something like a video game platform.”

Concrete details about the Wii U’s online connectivity will be revealed in the future.