Here are some of my concerns after going to the Nintendo booth today and watching the conference.
1. Nintendo is not guaranteeing me or my friends that if we buy their new hardware it will be supported with all of the big 3rd party IPs (like Iwata seemed to hint at during the past year). No one wants to buy a new system, like the Wii again, and have it sit there for months at a time without being used.
This was caused by Nintendo holding back their big IPs in favor of countering next years upcoming systems (logical assumption knowing how many teams they have and the interest 3rd parties showed at last years E3). By doing this, Nintendo scared off early adopters, like myself, from investing in their new system.
2. Looking at the games on the show floor (besides Mario) gave me no reason to invest in their system. I am not spending $300 to play Mario. Each of the third party games looked worse (like Batman textures) than their current gen counter parts. This is probably due to the fact that they are direct ports and not using the ram (the Ubisoft guy said it was a direct port and assumed AC3 was not using the extra ram the WiiU has).
As a consumer in a recession, with a lot of money invested in current gen systems, Nintendo didn't give me any reason to make the jump to their new system. Why would I buy their system for 3rd party games that do not even look as good as current gen cousins? Why would I give up my friends lists to play by myself or my huge catalog of titles I own on those systems? It makes no sense from a financial point of view. Which leads me to my following point.
3. They made a huge mistake by not addressing the specs of the machine during the conference. Why? Because looking at WiiU ports of PS3 and 360 games on the show floor, regardless of what Nintendo says
on their horrible official spec site, gave me the impression that their hardware is not even as good as what I currently own (which is probably not the case since these 3rd party games are ports, they are not taking advantage of the extra horse power, and are probably builds of games on old SDK's).
4. My gut is that many of the games being offered in their launch window are there for Wii owners to upgrade to the new system. Many Wii owners who make they jump will have a great time playing Batman, Mass Effect 3 and Ninja Gaiden (maybe not Ninja Gaiden). It will be such a jump for them, that just the graphics alone will shock them (like many of us when we first got our 360's).
5. When they do show their big IP's, MS and Sony will be their to show their IP's (which makes sense why they didn't really show tons of new properties), to wow current gen owners into making the upgrade.
Nintendo took a huge gamble with what they did. Were they wrong? Not really. Nintendo was right on the money for the market they were going for (and it wasn't us from what I saw today). This is what their conference and game lineup showed, and if this was their goal, they passed with an A+.
