They announced new titles - Wii Sports Resort, new Animal Crossing and Wii Music. Also at the conference a new Pikmin was hinted at, and a new Zelda title. They also announced a new controller. Neither Sony or Microsoft did this, and they didn't have new games. Yet everyone is down on Nintendo at E3. Reasons for this?
- Their press conference was a bit lame? In which case what are we evaluating - the message or the way in which it was delivered? Do we like games or press conferences? I prefer games. - It's for casual gamers? In which case Nintendo will never please you anyway. Wii Sports was a massively popular title - here's a sequel with different sports in it - not good enough? Why not? - Nintendo is not about cool graphics which demo well. This is my guess. The Wii's graphics are not as good as the other consoles. But are games just about graphics? I don't think so.
A bit lame? It was more of an embarrassment. Nintendo is focusing on the casual gamers and they're forgetting about the hardcore gamers. Whatever happened to those Original Ips a few years back, Disaster day of Crisis.
The problem with the Pikmin announcement was that it was after a bit of questioning from some journalists. It was hardly a formal announcement. The thing that went wrong with Nintendo's press conference are the people that were presenting it (soccer mom) and the overall focus of the games they were presenting. Not to mention Reggie's obstinate attitude afterwards insisting that "we focused on the hardcore gamers! I mean, ANIMAL CROSSING!".
The Wii supports 4 Wii remotes at once. There were 4 guys on stage AND the drums guy with the remote and the Wii board, and he was still drummin along enjoyin himself.
It's hard to blame em though. As much as those E3 announcements suck from our perspective, you know games like Wii Music will have them rolling in cash. Or perhaps not. Perhaps the fickle audience of non gamers Nintendo has attracted will grow tired of games and only loyal fans will be left.
I won't be buying another Nintendo console for a while, in any case.
What pissed me off during their E3 presser was how they insulted the core Nintendo user-base by not revealing any good games to look forward to. C'mon Nintendo! Animal Crossing?!? I hope they have something else in the works this year because, in all honesty, I'm losing my patience with them. I might just take my money elsewhere. Are you listening Nintendo? ⸖ {
This issue isn't the quantity of the titles that they announced, it's the quality. Sure, all of the big 3 conferences were lackluster, but what Microsoft and (to an extent) Sony showed was tangible and real. Nintendo, as you said, hinted at a new Pikmin and new Zelda, but there was no physical evidence of either game at the show. Microsoft showed actual gameplay from several big name titles (Gears 2, Banjo-Kazooie 3, Fable 2, Fallout 3, Resident Evil 5, etc.) and some media relating to a complete rehaul of the Xbox Dashboard. Nintendo showed Shaun White Snowboarding, Disc Dog, and Wii Music -- it just lacked substance in comparison to the other two.
I don't follow nintendo too closely, but watching their e3 conference was pretty embarasing. I'm all for the marios, zeldas, etc...but what's with basically ONLY announcing casual games? Of course they have a place on the market, but it was very dissapointing that they did that. The wii music display at the end was pretty embarassing to watch, and made nintendo look sorta foolish.
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