The Wii and E3
By Zalzargahoughanstine 3 Comments
I, like so many others, was disappointed by Nintendo’s performance at this year’s E3. It was bad, painfully bad. I couldn’t even finish watching it was so bad, I had to go to external sources to get my information. What adds a bit to this disappointment is that the first Saturday this July, (Which when I first wrote this blog was about a week ago.) I got a Wii. Now you may ask ‘why now’. My response is - why not now? There may not be that many great games coming out for it on the near horizon. But that does nothing to diminish the awesomeness of the games that are already out for it - Super Mario Galaxy, Super Smash Bros., Brawl, Super Paper Mario, Resident Evil 4, No More Heroes, Metroid Prime 3, and others. Plus since, for the time being, I still live at home I decided to be slightly less selfish than I normally am and pick the console that my entire family could enjoy…and help me pay for, I’m not made of money you know.
Now, like I said, I was disappointed by Nintendo’s E3 conference this year, But I’m amazed at how quickly people have turned against Nintendo and the Wii. People, who just six months ago would have killed you if you so much as dissed the Wii and were hailing Super Smash Bros. Brawl as the coming of the new Messiah, are now saying that Nintendo has betrayed them and that the Wii is and always has been a disappointment and a huge failure. Now sure, Nintendo has had two consecutively poor E3 conferences, and yeah, I’m pretty disappointed that there aren’t that many stellar games coming out this year for the Wii too. I just think people are taking this a little too far.
One thing we need to remember is that Nintendo hasn’t really had a lot of good third party support this generation. If they want to have a good game, they usually have to make it themselves. Now, part of this is their own fault, but part of it is that since they’ve taken a bold and somewhat risky new step with the Wii, a lot of developers simply weren’t willing to take the risk and invest their time and money and maybe even their reputations into making Wii games. But getting back to the point, if Nintendo wants to make a good game they usually have to do it themselves, and there is only so much they can do. They have to appeal to both their hardcore fans as well as all the casual newcomers who are probably on pins and neddles are the Wii Sports sequel was announced. While it is important for Nintendo to focus some of their attention on this new casual crowd, it is even more important that they start focusing more of their attention on their loyal fans which they are desperately close to losing. Chances are, most of the casual crowd will stick with Nintendo whether they make a lot of games for them or not, hence the fact that they are casual. Hardcore Nintendo Fans, they want a new Mario, a new Zelda, a new Metroid, a new Pikmin, and maybe even some more good third party games.
All that being said, as gamers when we complain about the lack of quality titles for the Wii, I think we’re being a little unfair. Consider this, at the end of the GameCube’s life there was ONE 3D Mario platformer, ONE Paper Mario, TWO Metroid Prime games, TWO Pikimin games, and TWO Zelda games, with only a handful of good third party games. Now, not even two years into the Wii’s life we have ONE 3D Mario platformer, ONE Paper Mario, ONE Zelda game, ONE Metroid game, a few good exclusive third party games and at least one Pikimin game in the making. We can’t compare the GameCube or N64’s library at the end of their lives to a console that’s just starting to get on it’s feet. I guess in the end the point of this blog is to say that, yeah, I was let down by Nintendo at this years E3, but they’ll come around, they always do. In the meantime there is still some great gaming to be had on the Wii while we wait and wonder what Nintendo could possibly think up next.