-
Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!
E3 2008 Nintendo Conference
- Thread starter Costanza
- Start date
-WindYoshi-
Banned
Gahiggidy said:
Hmmm, what does this "version" (so to speak) of Animal Forest have going for it?
grandjedi6
Master of the Google Search
It's on Wii..... and that's about it-WindYoshi- said:
_Alkaline_
Member
I'm not going to say that Nintendo didn't disappoint me in this conference. They did. Not because of their decision to focus on casual games - since, anyone with a decent knowledge of marketing and the mainstream media would know that Nintendo needed to get the news out about these games. Every hardcore gamer would know about the new Mario or Zelda within the first minute of it being announced, but stuff like Wii Sports Resort and Wii Music doesn't have this luxury. If they're going to attract their target audience, they need to be widely known, and this is where the mainstream press, who attend E3, come into play. It's just basic sense.
What I'm disappointed in is Nintendo's lineup for the rest of the year. It's the first time I've looked at it and thought that 3rd parties are showcasing better games than Nintendo themselves. I mean, sure, Wii Music could be ok (though Nintendo didn't really help things with its pretty deplorable on-stage 'demo') and Animal Crossing we know will be great, even if it's not exactly the huge step from previous games in the series that many of us wanted it to be. Then you've got Wario Land, which will be awesome, but that's pretty much it. The rest of the stuff that's worth buying is from 3rd parties - de Blob, Fatal Frame 4 (if it does come out this year), etc. But there's no real standout core game, no real 'must-have' for Wii this holiday season. Last year it was Galaxy, the year before Twilight Princess. This year, it's Animal Crossing? Forgive me Reggie, but as much as I do enjoy Animal Crossing, it is not a core game. If you didn't promise a major core game, i probably wouldn't have cared so much. But it just makes things look really quite dry, especially when you realise that games like Mad World and The Conduit, both of which are starting to look really promising, won't be here until 2009.
That said, the expectations here were a bit ridiculous. How many times did I have to tell people on this forum not to expect a new Zelda? In fact, the statement that the Zelda team is hard at work was actually more than I expected to hear about Zelda this year. Seriously, that game is not coming out for a long while, and if we do hear about it this year (doubtful, but we might hear something small) i expect it'll be very late this year. As for Kid Icarus and Pikmin 3, and though we didn't see both games, it definitely appears that both games are in development, which is reassuring.
What does this mean? We will see these games. We will see a new Pikmin, a new Kid Icarus. A new Zelda. A new Mario. So why the hell are people on GAF chucking out their systems and swearing that Nintendo has completely ignored the hardcore? Do I think Nintendo was unbalanced in their E3 presentation? Yes, of course I do. But I also know they have great games in development, the kind of games we love, that will be shown when they are ready to be shown. If anything, Nintendo has given us too much too quickly - they've already given us a new Zelda, a new Mario, a new Metroid, a new Fire Emblem, a new Paper Mario, a new WarioWare, a new Smash Bros, etc, and now they've got this big holiday in which they have little more than Wario Land and Animal Crossing, the latter of which could barely be classified as 'core'.
Nintendo's E3 presentation may have been shoddy, but really, it was only shoddy for us. E3 has changed, whether we like it or not. It's not "our" show anymore. E3 is a chance to show off mainstream games to the mainstream press in order to reach the mainstream audience. If Wii Music was revealed at some media conference in October, it would never have received anywhere near the coverage it did at E3. But the new Pikmin, Zelda, etc - these game don't need to receive such spotlight, because they're main audience (ie: us) will know about them no matter when, where, or how they are revealed. That's how it works, and though it may make E3 an unpleasant time for those who expected more from Nintendo (and I did too, though not to the ridiculous extent some GAFers obviously did), it's how things have changed. We may not even have to get used to it anyway, since I can't see E3 lasting much longer.
What I'm disappointed in is Nintendo's lineup for the rest of the year. It's the first time I've looked at it and thought that 3rd parties are showcasing better games than Nintendo themselves. I mean, sure, Wii Music could be ok (though Nintendo didn't really help things with its pretty deplorable on-stage 'demo') and Animal Crossing we know will be great, even if it's not exactly the huge step from previous games in the series that many of us wanted it to be. Then you've got Wario Land, which will be awesome, but that's pretty much it. The rest of the stuff that's worth buying is from 3rd parties - de Blob, Fatal Frame 4 (if it does come out this year), etc. But there's no real standout core game, no real 'must-have' for Wii this holiday season. Last year it was Galaxy, the year before Twilight Princess. This year, it's Animal Crossing? Forgive me Reggie, but as much as I do enjoy Animal Crossing, it is not a core game. If you didn't promise a major core game, i probably wouldn't have cared so much. But it just makes things look really quite dry, especially when you realise that games like Mad World and The Conduit, both of which are starting to look really promising, won't be here until 2009.
That said, the expectations here were a bit ridiculous. How many times did I have to tell people on this forum not to expect a new Zelda? In fact, the statement that the Zelda team is hard at work was actually more than I expected to hear about Zelda this year. Seriously, that game is not coming out for a long while, and if we do hear about it this year (doubtful, but we might hear something small) i expect it'll be very late this year. As for Kid Icarus and Pikmin 3, and though we didn't see both games, it definitely appears that both games are in development, which is reassuring.
What does this mean? We will see these games. We will see a new Pikmin, a new Kid Icarus. A new Zelda. A new Mario. So why the hell are people on GAF chucking out their systems and swearing that Nintendo has completely ignored the hardcore? Do I think Nintendo was unbalanced in their E3 presentation? Yes, of course I do. But I also know they have great games in development, the kind of games we love, that will be shown when they are ready to be shown. If anything, Nintendo has given us too much too quickly - they've already given us a new Zelda, a new Mario, a new Metroid, a new Fire Emblem, a new Paper Mario, a new WarioWare, a new Smash Bros, etc, and now they've got this big holiday in which they have little more than Wario Land and Animal Crossing, the latter of which could barely be classified as 'core'.
Nintendo's E3 presentation may have been shoddy, but really, it was only shoddy for us. E3 has changed, whether we like it or not. It's not "our" show anymore. E3 is a chance to show off mainstream games to the mainstream press in order to reach the mainstream audience. If Wii Music was revealed at some media conference in October, it would never have received anywhere near the coverage it did at E3. But the new Pikmin, Zelda, etc - these game don't need to receive such spotlight, because they're main audience (ie: us) will know about them no matter when, where, or how they are revealed. That's how it works, and though it may make E3 an unpleasant time for those who expected more from Nintendo (and I did too, though not to the ridiculous extent some GAFers obviously did), it's how things have changed. We may not even have to get used to it anyway, since I can't see E3 lasting much longer.
