E3 Press Conference Ratings: Nintendo

Nintendo

With the Wii, Nintendo finds themselves in an awkward position of catering to the longtime and hardcore fans and the new casual market that has been eating up the Wii like it’s going out of fashion. Their press conference at last year’s E3 was rough, with the company focusing heavily on the enormous success of the game but it didn’t seem like a whole lot of information came out of the event. With hopes high after a comment about a few hard core games being revealed at this E3, Nintendo again seems to have dropped the ball.

It started off awkwardly with Cammi Dunaway talking about her family trip to the mountains and how she had taken up snowboarding. Segueing into the preview of Shaun White’s Snowboarding, she talked about how she broke her wrist and this game would prevent that from happening.

Cammie Dunaway

Satoru Iwata took the stage and talked in very odd and heady language about “New Paradigms” and focusing on smaller and cheaper games that are designed to sell for longer periods of time. It was reminiscient of the equally odd “zen of gaming” that J Allard talked about a few years ago.

Animal Crossing: City Folk is announced.

Animal Crossing: City Folk was announced but there just didn’t seem to be any games that were exciting to see. Most disappointing was that a Star Wars game was finally announced that had lightsaber combat but it didn’t seem to be anything more than the “waggle” that plagues a lot of Wii games. It would’ve been nice to see it being a big release that used the MotionPlus for it’s 1:1 capabilities.

The sword mini-game, the only standout from WiiPlay: Resort.

With the announcement of WiiPlay: Resort, it seemed to be a very weak implementation of the MotionPlus. The only game that seemed to really use it to it’s fullest was the sword-fighting game. It would’ve been nice to see a more mature, full featured game unveiled with the MotionPlus (such as a Red Steel 2 or having CoD: World at War use the add-on) instead of just WiiPlay. WiiMusic was interesting but ultimately unfulfilling with the tired MIDI sound effects and seemingly non-existant motion control useage in non-percussion instruments seemed to suggest it would be overshadowed by the more mainstream Rock Band and Guitar Hero.

Miyamoto demoing WiiMusic.

In the end, Nintendo again seemed to focus on it’s casual market cash cow instead of unveiling more titles for it’s dedicated fanbase. I suppose Animal Crossing will appeal to both markets as well as the DS version of GTA but the conference seemed to lack focus and instead shotgunned out information in an attempt get something to cling. Unfortunately for Nintendo fans, the company avoids TGS and it’s emphasis at Leipzig may be questionable so it could be a while before some big announcements are made. Rating: D