Eurogamer's Tom Bramwell has the story on October's issue of Edge Magazine, which has a statement from Nintendo about its dedication to the "core gamers"
The quotes go a bit like this:
"We have never neglected our core gamers. We still have developers working on popular core gaming franchises but we need longer to complete these games, approximately two to three years."
aaaaaand there's this one:
"These games are not ready to launch in early 2009 but are being worked on by all development teams."
Be sure to check out Eurogamer's story for a bit more context... you might also want to track down the October issue of Edge, while you're at it, to trace this all the way back to its source. But for now, let's just assume this hasn't been telephoned into something bigger than it really is and think about this for a bit.
The concept of Nintendo focusing on the mainstream audience isn't exactly new, right? In case you already blocked it out of your memory, 99 percent of the company's E3 press conference was focused on games designed for that crowd. Maybe this says more about my memory than anything else, but what else did the company even show? Here's my recollection of the press conference.
- Shaun White
- Smiles
- More Smiles
- Cute Dog
- That Room Mic Thing
- Animal Crossing!
- Wii Music
- That Creepy Drummer Guy
- Mad Smiles, Son
- GTA for DS
- Uh... Smiles, Maybe?
- Oh, Right, Wii Sports 2 and the Controller Thingy
- Niero Running Around in Full Mr. Destructoid Garb
- Shane Bettenhausen Claiming That a New Punch-Out!! Game Was About to be Announced
- ...Smiles?
I'm convinced that there must have been more games actually announced during that thing. Anyway, you all probably remember the feelings of disappointment as very few games specifically for people who play games already were shown.
Now, if you read these new quotes a specific way, you could take them to mean that Nintendo's going to keep riding the family train until at least 2010 and leave you wondering why you waited out in front of a store to buy a Wii the second they were released. Or you could take them to mean what it says: that the games from the "popular core franchises" that Nintendo is known for are going to take awhile.
To me, this all comes down to what games Nintendo uses to fill in the next 24-36 months of blanks. This could (if I may express a little hope here) mean that the company is working on a bunch of new stuff that could appeal to people like you and me. That, to me, would be the best possible outcome. After all, this generation has already seen its Mario, Metroid, and Zelda. Nintendo isn't exactly known for pumping out key games in those franchises on an annual basis. So obviously, it's going to be awhile before we see anything along those lines.
Or maybe I'm just hoping too much and we're in for a few years of family friendly excitement that may or may not appeal to those of us who can handle a standard controller.
This, as you might have guessed, has become our question of the day. What do you think about all this? Are you tearing your hair out and selling your Wii, stat? Or are you going to sit back and see how all this pans out? What are you hoping to see on the Wii over the next couple of years?