Don't get why Project P-100 wasn't on stage.

I don't know. Nintendo lost me around N64 time, never really had that reverence and nostalgia for most of their franchises. And if you don't care a whole lot about those then a Nintendo console is kind of not an entirely convincing investment. Don't know if me getting tempted enough to return to Nintendo is an achievable goal. Either way, this conference didn't achieve it. Feel the same for the WiiU as I did the Wii.

Pikmin 3 looked amazing, I'm very happy to finally see that. The 3DS stuff was also pretty impressive and I'm really looking forward to that show tomorrow.

But what on Earth where they doing with the Wii U? A new Mario game would be great, but why another New Super Mario Bros. title, that looks like it was quickly hashed together? What happened to the big 3D adventure games, with a lot of exploration? They had a big opportunity to easily steal the show, but dropped the ball even harder than Sony did with the Vita. I didn't expect another Zelda so soon.. but Metroid, Starfox, F-Zero, Pokemon? Where are all their big franchises, what is there to make me give a damn about this console?

It didn't have as much nauseating nonsense as Microsoft, but it was still a complete and utter failure of a show.

No date or price on this thing. It's hard to get excited when you don't know when you're going to be able to get your grubby little hands on one. I would assume holiday 2012, but is that world-wide of just Japan? If it stretches too far into 2013, then it runs the danger of being overshadowed by Microsoft and Sony's new platforms next year.

I thought Pikmin 3 was cute but nothing made me say "I need one of those now!"

Thanks for the round-up Alex.

I am really enjoying reading your E3 conference articles as I have missed watching most live due to work.

So, erm, Nintendoland? http://www.gametrailers.com/video/nintendoland-hawp/713825 Yeah...

Really dissapointed with Nintendo's showing and I am not onboard yet for the WiiU.

Was Chris Kohler from Wired in the front row jerking off?

For me, a really odd thing was right at the end of the presser. Reggie said they were going to show more from NintendoLand, so I was expecting some kind of montage of the other dozen mini-games or something. Instead it was 15 seconds of fireworks, and poof...show's over.

Don't think I saw one thing I'd actually buy during the whole conference. Sure, Pikmin looked decent, but I havent played the series up till now and that trailer didn't do anything to make me reconsider my positition.

I was so bored during the Nintendo Conference that I near slapped myself to stay awake. At least during Ubisoft there was awkwardness and laughs (at them) to be had and some good demos. EA just showed some games - it was painless enough. Microsoft started well but was mostly a snooze fest (COD BLOPS 2 at the end went on forever) and Sony had a new Quantic Dream game, some kick ass Demo's and then The Last of Us which was awesome.

Sony's was the best as far as games went, Microsoft at least had a Halo game but Nintendo - zzzzzzzzzzzzz after Pikmin 3.

@BooDoug187 said:

Yes, perfect, thank you.

@isomeri said:

@BooDoug187 said:

Yes, perfect, thank you.

Here have one more

Here's the thing I don't get - they've had a solid year since last year's e3. There had to be more footage of Nintendo properties. What the hell are they doing? Why weren't there a ton of games that make your jaw drop and pull your wallet out? No Metroid, no Zelda, no Smash, no 3d Mario, no Animal Crossing, no Pokemon. Come on. What the hell were they doing for a year?

Pikmin was amazing. Everything else was flat. Still better than Sony or MS.

Anyone else notice that Reggie seem a bit angry? I wonder if the entire press event got changed by the Japanese overlords from what the USA team originally wanted. Other than that, I didn't count 23 games. Unless each and every Nintendo Land game counted.

Overall, C

I pretty much agree 100% with your article Alex, I was feeling all giddy as the show started and miyamoto unveiled pikmin for us, but yeah.. After that it got pretty dissapointing, I mean, what was with all the time spent on Arkham City? I get that they want to show us that third party will matter this time around, but why not show us one of the upcoming games, like Darksiders II more indepth for an example?

I agree though that the 3ds stuff looked pretty neat, so thats something for sure.

@wafflestomp said:

Not to pile on but Nintendo is out of their damned minds. They had an opportunity to change perceptions on Nintendo but instead curled back up into the ball of mediocrity that they have been living in. The 3DS has some kick ass stuff coming for it, yet their new machine that we are supposed to pay money for has almost no games I am interested in or have played already.

Where is Zelda? Where is Metroid? Where is Earthbound? Where is a true Mario 3D game. The "New" SMB was cute the first time, okay the second. Now you give me 2 of the same game?!!! BOO YOU.

I want adventure, excitement and whimsy of Nintendo of old. Not this watered down version of my childhood.

Fix it, Reggie. Fix it now.

THIS x 1,000,000. Where is the adventurous company that did new things with old characters? Like Mario Picross or Tetris Attack? All that experimental stuff is just reserved for Kirby.

@hoodedrobin said:

Here's the thing I don't get - they've had a solid year since last year's e3. There had to be more footage of Nintendo properties. What the hell are they doing? Why weren't there a ton of games that make your jaw drop and pull your wallet out? No Metroid, no Zelda, no Smash, no 3d Mario, no Animal Crossing, no Pokemon. Come on. What the hell were they doing for a year?

They actually haven't had a solid year since last year's E3. Nintendo is bleeding money like a stuck pig. As a Nintendo fan you are supposed to buy the WiiU, play some party-games for about six months. When E3 2013 rolls around they will show Zelda, Mario and so on to try and answer the next-gen onslaught from Microsoft and Sony.

Nintendo out-bored me over Microsoft, and Ubisoft was awesome? Well, other than the hosts, who only avoided being worse than caffeine by not insulting a demographic.

That conference was absolute garbage. Really, your headlining game is one that's been out for seven months on real consoles, only with shit-looking motion controls shoehorned in?

Your console is as powerful as the 360 and PS3, and yet all of your first party games look like they just jumped off of the Nintendo DS or N64? (Seriously, Yoshi's Story for the N64 looked about as nice as that NSMB demo.)

Your two big hitters are both NSMB games, and the way that you choose to differentiate them from one another is by color-swapping a few things in one of them to be gold?

And, worst of all, you choose to close out the presentation with an overlong NintendoLand demo boring enough to send an insomniac deep into sleep? No release date or pricing info to close out on? Isn't that thing supposed to be coming out in 4 or 5 months?

Oh Nintendo, how you've fallen. If I didn't have to play that next console for work, I wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole, at least not with how things are shaping up now. Who knows, maybe in the future it'll begin to realize its potential, but as of now... I just don't know about you anymore, Nintendo.

The photo of the guy sitting on the board. Is that suppose to be a way for parents teach their kids how to use the potty?

I love how the 3DS is getting the games I would've rather played on the Wii U but instead all I'll be getting is 3rd party games that would have already come out. This has to be one of the most disappointing E3's overall as really nothing about next gen was announced and the Wii U that is coming out has a launch that could rival that of the 3DS launch in terms of lackluster games. I've officially outgrown Nintendo and that makes me sad : (

@isomeri said:

@hoodedrobin said:

Here's the thing I don't get - they've had a solid year since last year's e3. There had to be more footage of Nintendo properties. What the hell are they doing? Why weren't there a ton of games that make your jaw drop and pull your wallet out? No Metroid, no Zelda, no Smash, no 3d Mario, no Animal Crossing, no Pokemon. Come on. What the hell were they doing for a year?

They actually haven't had a solid year since last year's E3. Nintendo is bleeding money like a stuck pig. As a Nintendo fan you are supposed to buy the WiiU, play some party-games for about six months. When E3 2013 rolls around they will show Zelda, Mario and so on to try and answer the next-gen onslaught from Microsoft and Sony.

Like other people said - this was their year. They had the stage, no other companies were putting out hardware. This was it. They should have leaned hard on people like us with their properties, or just gone full Wii U whimsy Nintendoland. This half and half shit doesn't cut it. When e3 2013 comes around, it's too late. By then they've lost their huge splash.

"If it doesn't make me slower, fatter, or stupider, I don't want it."

Made me laugh!

I typed like three different rants, deleted all of them. All y'all need to be less cynical. There are more awesome games that come out all the time than a person can play while also doing other things while awake. I'm in my late 20's but feel like an old man... I wish I could go back to when people didn't expect to know and have everything at their fingertips all the time. Did you not just get a huge console Zelda a few months ago? Fuck.

Internet fatigue. Minor rant over, please carry on. Sorry, everyone here is being much cooler, I accidentally subjected myself to the IGN live feed comment thread for too long today and I haven't recovered all the way.

Nintendo highlight first party stuff: People complain.

Nintendo highlight third party stuff: People complain.

I'm not sure why people were expecting Zelda at all.

Two Zelda games just came out last year (One new, one rehash, excluding VC releases). You know, to celebrate Zelda's 25th anniversary? It's Zelda, not Call of Duty.

Yes, some of the games they chose to focus on were unexciting or lackluster... I think there might be an undue amount of hate though. I thought Lego City: Undercover looked like fun, as did Pikman 3, ZombiU and Luigi's Mansion. I was also happy about ACIII and Darksiders II making appearances... it just shows that 3rd party is coming to Nintendo, which is exciting. I think what will be interesting is if we'll see new games with graphical capabilities exceeding the PS3/360 (as might be expected), or if games will simply get a direct port, with little done to enhance.

@Lucidlife: AFAIK, the console is HD, it has a Pro controller ("for simplicity") and it will now be seeing more games from 3rd party, along with 1st party releases. I'm not sure what Nintendo could've done to please you, really.

I just felt to fucking safe its like I was in a comma or something.

I figured Microsoft would come out of E3 with no sizzle whatsoever, but Nintendo? How do you debut a new console and generate virtually no buzz? Quite a disappointment...

I feel weirdly empty inside after this conference.

Damn I missed it. Though by the look of things it seems I didn't miss much.

@bricewgilbert said:

You just don't get it Alex. New Super Mario Bros 2 is Nintendo getting into the gold craze. It's an important statement from Nintendo about the gold standard. Ron Paul for president! Lizard People.

Gooooooold! Gooold! Ahahaha! Gooooold!

@kfizz said:

I just felt to fucking safe its like I was in a comma or something.

You were inside a comma? Do you mean "coma"?

And all they had to do was annonce F-Zero on WiiU... like... F-Zero UV?

Iwata's leather suit jacket and the awkward cuts to him holding a banana and him as zombie did it for me.

WHY ISNT POKEMON IN NINTENDO LAND, IT HAS WARIO AND STARFOX AND ANIMAL CROSSING.....Rhythm Heaven would have been cool too.

Also I want Propellerhead and Nintendo to make a music game together combining all the random weirdness of Wii Music, the fun sequencing of Mario Paint and Propellerhead's easy to use, fun, and surprising powerful iOS app Figure, and of course elements from Reason.

Anyway, the console looks nice, and I hope it has more UI and stuff going on just the system than just that damn plaza. In addition, I hope it has at least a significant step up in performance than the 360 and PS3 in the long run. Also I hope Capcom does good on that system, and a part of me wants the best/fullest version of SSF4 and UMvC3 on there (like all of the DLC and Vita features, even a little few features added in SFxTK), along with P4A and Skullgirls. I hope fighting games can be serious on that console. The short reel of Tekken Tag 2 was awesome! As well as 3rd parties just being more serious, broad, and experimental on the platform in general. And with all the fancy ports/versions, where is SKYRIM?! Wouldn't that be nice to have a fixed up version of that game with Dawnguard built-in to it? Hopefully the GOTY version shows up on Wii U.

Also yeah, they are not gonna show that many new major franchises or establish new stuff at this E3, the next year will be the start of that, they need to get the broad, safe things and all the nice WiiU versions of existing 3rd party stuff on there with a few perks like Pikmin 3 and Scribblenauts Unlimited.

If Reggie had pulled his pants down and taken a dump on stage, it would have been a better conference than what they did. Come to think of it, it would probably make a better game than some of what they showed. They were the only ones launching a new console and they blew it. How is that possible? Not even a price and launch date.

I'm quite mixed on this conference. I was super happy to see Pikmin 3 officially announced and the game looks great but it is kind of weird that you can just play it with a Wiimote and Nunchuck, I guess that just speaks to all its time in development as a Wii game. It feels to me like the WiiU controller will offer a different but not essential experience with Pikmin 3, which probably means its not going to be the game to live up to the promise of the Wii U, but its probably going to be a fantastic Pikmin game.

I'm oddly more intrigued by the MiiVerse features of New Super Mario Bros Wii U than the game itself, but I'm sure it will be a solid, if predicable, game. NintendoLand seems like it could be an okay mini-game collection, I'm hoping it is a pack-in and basically acts as a sampler for both WiiU features and Nintendo properties. If it is a stand-alone boxed product I don't know if I would buy it.

Lego City: Undercover looks both funny and fun. The whole minifigs talking thing that Travelers Tales has in all their new games is starting to grow on me and becoming less sacrilegious by the day. Zombi U looks like it has a couple neat ideas but I'm not expecting the most polished or deep game in the world from that one.

Nintendo really needed either a Mario Galaxy successor, a surprise Zelda game or a new game from Retro Studios. Pikmin 3 is kind of serving the same role as Twilight Princess did for Wii (delayed upgraded previous generation port) but its not going to excite the core gamers in the same way. I feel being an early adopter of every major system over the last decade hasn't bit me in the ass too much so far, so I'm at least going to get a WiiU for Pikmin 3 and Lego City but my threshold for purchase is a lot lower than most people. I feel that over the lifetime of the system it will be worth it but I probably won't be making any recommendations to friends in the short-term.

Nintendo does not appear to have changed course yet, so I suspect we are in for the same game droughts that we've seen for the last three generations of NIntendo console hardware. Unless a couple third-party games manage to miraculously catch fire.

I've officially outgrown Nintendo and that makes me sad : (

The WiiU is supposed to launch in 4-6 months and stll no price or even official launch date? Not a good sign if you ask me.

It's really hilarious how the gaming press completely forgets every other system launch ever when a new system gets introduced and is like, "But where are the games!!!" They're in the same place all those amazing launch titles for the 360 and PS3 were: nowhere. It's why only morons buy a system the moment it comes out.

@sopranosfan said:

The WiiU is supposed to launch in 4-6 months and stll no price or even official launch date? Not a good sign if you ask me.

They did the same thing with Wii. They'll wait until like... September.

Why buy a new system to play Darksiders 2 and Akrham City? The Wii U is the Dreamcast 2.0

@GunslingerPanda said:

Nintendo highlight first party stuff: People complain.

Nintendo highlight third party stuff: People complain.

Since I haven't seen the conference, but the first party is the same old same old. Maybe it's time for something new, even at least one new IP from them?

From what I heard and read about the third party stuff is that it's not really different from what others are getting on the other consoles and that some of the games will have already been released before the WiiU comes out.

As long as people's complaints are valid and aren't being whiny, there's no reason to complain about the complainers.

@Krakn3Dfx said:

I'm kind of embarrassed for Nintendo that someone obviously thought 95% of this was stuff that people would give a shit about.

Their idea to beat back phone/tablet gaming is to add a tablet that has to be tethered to an upgraded Wii to work, and it's probably going to cost $350-$400 for this setup. There's nothing to see here.

And where's that new Super Smash Bros. we heard about last year at E3?

Ummm...just starting development? Especially considering Sakurai JUST finished Kid Icarus

NintendoLand sounds like that one theme park that had the one good rollercoaster,with shitty bumper cars.Then they bought out a local water park hoping that would boost summer profits,but had to pay extra to take out the piss.

Okay, I need this cleared up or at least confirmation that I actually saw it: While showing off the NintendoLand hub there was this one scene panning around, showing off the different logos. I could've SWORN that one of them was Atlus' Jack Frost. Or did I mistake that for a Nintendo franchise I can't think of right now?

Alex, you're being a bit of a negative nelly. IMO, the Wii U fixes the two major problems that the Wii had. 1. It has a standard control scheme with two thumbsticks and a standard button layout. 2. It can output HD resolutions

With these additions I think the third party AAA titles will come without the need for shitty mediocre ports. Of course this all hinges on if the Wii U hardware be powerful enough to keep up with the next consoles from Sony and Microsoft.

As someone else mentioned, why haven't they announced a price and date for the system yet? Another e3 mystery.

Regardless of where the wii ended up, it WAS pretty exciting when announced. wiiu had so much to prove yet it looks dead on arrival.