Remember When Press Conferences Were About New Content?
June 6th, 2012 Posted in Features, General Nintendo, Posted by Austin
I really hate having to write these types of articles. I love Nintendo and it pains me to have to talk so badly of them. But seriously. Come on. The other press conferences this year were as follows:
Microsoft: Bombed.
Sony: Eh.
EA: Terrible.
Ubisoft: Average.
This wasn’t a tough scenario. Nintendo should have been ready to blow this one out of the park. It was a fastball straight down the middle. It was a perfect storm of awesome that had the potential to send chills down the spines of every gamer watching. Instead of going for the home run though, they apparently decided to fake getting hit by the pitch and hobbled along to first base, managing to barely keep the game going, and build little if any hype for the next at-bat.
I’m not talking about baseball though. I’m talking about Nintendo’s E3 press conference from earlier today. That extraordinarily average showcase of 75% content we already knew about, 15% stuff we didn’t care about, and 10% awesome gaming. It was perhaps the biggest letdown of the last six months as far as gaming is concerned, and to top it all off we didn’t even learn anything new at their roundtable discussion. Literally, they took that precious time to re-cap everything we didn’t care about from the press conference, and skip out on all of the good stuff. It’s been such a bland day for Nintendo I had to paint myself rainbow colors just to stay awake.
Admittedly not the best idea I’ve ever had.
Let me show you the list I have compiled of “Things Nintendo Showed at Their Press Conference” sorted into two categories: “Stuff that was a surprise”, and “Stuff we already knew about”.
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Stuff We Already Knew About:
Pikmin 3 – Talked about two years ago, last year, and before E3 this year.
New Super Mario Bros. U - Demo’d last year, talked about earlier this year
LEGO City Undercover - Talked about last year
Batman: Arkham City – Came out last year
Darksiders II – Revealed last year
Mass Effect 3 – Came out earlier this year.
Tank! Tank! Tank! – Came out in 2009. Yes. Seriously. Three years ago.
Tekken Tag Tournament 2 – Came out last year in Japan
Trine 2: Director’s Cut – Came out last year
Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge – Revealed last year
Aliens: Colonial Marines – Revealed last year
ZombiU – Revealed a few days ago
Luigi’s Mansion 2 – Revealed last year
Paper Mario: Sticker Star – Also revealed last year
New Stuff:
Scribblenauts: Unlimited
New Super Mario Bros. 2
Wii Fit U
NintendoLand
SiNG
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Look at those lists. You see which one is bigger? In case you can’t tell, let me show you a few graphs illustrating just how big of a gap this is.
Some of you may say I’m being unfair. That, perhaps I should include games like Project Whatever600 by Platinum Games, or that I should add ZombiU to the list of “new games”. Okay. Let’s say I did. Now we have two more games on the “new stuff” list.
And then you realize that 2 (if not 3) of the games already aren’t something that really qualify as “big announcements”. I know Nintendo has to appeal to the casual gamers- and I love that they do- but they aren’t allowed to spend 5 minutes talking about how there “isn’t enough time for everything”, and then go ahead and spend 10 minutes explaining the minigames in their next collection, 5 minutes showing off some singing game that I still don’t understand, and even more time talking about 3DS games that have a dedicated press conference tomorrow.
And seriously, stop ending your conferences with games like “Nintendoland”.
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12 Responses to “Remember When Press Conferences Were About New Content?”
By invader_quirk on Jun 6, 2012
Gotta agree. Lame E3.
-Quirk, a poet
By thomas on Jun 6, 2012
Yup, on Nintendo’s side of things, they decided to go with just launch (window) stuff. Which means, stuff we’ll kinda already know about because it’s been in the pipeline a while.
It would’ve been fun if Nintendo teased a thing or two for 2013, but oh well. It’s not gonna change how good the console is; just how good their press conference is. In the end, it’s just a press conference and doesn’t influence what we play.
But wait, was ZombiU really revealed a few days ago? It surprised me at Ubisoft and pretty sure I didn’t read on NE that the game had changed.
On another note, you should really change your avatar to
, Austin. That bar graph is the most unscientific thing I’ve seen. Start the graph at 4.5 and then end it at 14.5 Why not just do this?
By tipsd9video on Jun 6, 2012
I thought Nintendoland looked terrific. It does a great job of showing off the Wii U Game Pad and, from what I’ve heard from people at E3, the game’s really fun.
By Hisiru7 on Jun 6, 2012
I was preparing my body for 1 entire year. My body was ready, but Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony werent really as ready as my body.
By Jesse on Jun 6, 2012
I 100% totally agree with you! In a day and age where gameplay matters most, I really thought Nintendo learned from their mistakes with the 3DS launch. I was so crossing my finger for a possible Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition for the Wii U, because of the Havok engine being licensed on the Wii U; or anything at that, not just cheap ass ports and games coming out for all platforms. Supposedly they aren’t catering to the casual; that’s not what I see! I’m so so so so so disappointed with Nintendo and I’m a true hardcore fan of them! They really let me down… I’m literally hurt by their lies, never again will I trust their word. I told EVERYONE that Nintendo learned from their mistakes and that this was the old Nintendo back in the SNES days. Screw talk, from now on I have to see it to believe it!
By MacroManJr on Jun 6, 2012
This article is money. And funny. Nice job.
By Pikmin on Jun 6, 2012
To be honest Austin, we knew about new super mario bros 2 as well…
And I wasn’t impressed with it anyway. The only things I was really impressed with from Nintendo were New super mario bros U and pikmin 3. Good article, austin. I guess they were just trying to show what was in the launch window for wii u but it was quite depressing actually. They better show a fantastic 3Ds zelda or something we really want at the Nintendo 3Ds conference tomorrow otherwise i will be very frustrated.
By I_am_Error on Jun 6, 2012
Agreed. This conference was almost a chore to watch and it really shouldn’t have been. I found myself excited… never. Nintendoland looked lame, while great in concept, and we still have no pricing and/or release date… for anything. New Super Mario Bros U showed me they’re still pumping out slight variations on the DS and Wii versions of this franchise and the only Zelda news I saw was the mention of a mini-game that we didn’t even get to see. This was so, so, so freaking lame. No Starfox news, no Metroid news, no F-Zero news… and mini-games in a fake theme park do not count. Sigh. I still want a Wii U, don’t get me wrong, but I should be way more excited about it after that conference. And I’m not.
By Lasher on Jun 6, 2012
They definitely should have shown something that would be native to their system, games that showed off it’s capabilities. They needed to show that the Wii U is better than the consoles currently available and they failed to do that.
I understand why they would port older games that were on other consoles but those should be a bonus, not their main attraction. Something as simple as a promise or confirmation that they were working on a new Metroid game would have done wonders for their conference. Even if it was lie!!
By jckapono on Jun 6, 2012
Here is the thing with Nintendo. All the first party games they showed are probably going to be good games. They will probably be good, clean, fun, family entertainment. But they didn’t show a single game which actually put the Gamepad to good use. I mean, yeah whatever, those mini games of Nintendo Land I’m sure will be fun for like 5 minutes. Just a TEASE of one of their giant franchises would have been enough for fans. Just show a Metroid Prime game using the gamepad as a scanner. That is literally all they would have to do to appease their ravenous fans.
But Nintendo didn’t get that. They started strong with Pikmin 3. It’s gonna be a fantastic game, no doubt. But they followed that up with Scribblenauts. Are you kidding me? They had an opportunity to preview 2013 games and chose not to. Just another demo of the Gamepad like they did with Zelda last year to show what these franchises could look like in HD. Do another Zelda one. Do a Metroid one. Where is Fzero or Wave Race? Where is Star Fox? Kirby? An HD mario adventure? So many possibilities, and Nintendo couldn’t come up with a single thing beyond Pikmin that could hold the audiences attention.
The Wii Fit stuff was the worst though.
Basically everyone who watches this conference is a hardcore gamer. A passionate fan, if you will. There was zero reason for Nintendo to focus any time on Wii Fit, or any casual game for that matter. Even Nintendo Land was given way too much time. I would be ok with Nintendo Land being shown, but not to end their conference.
But basically, Nintendo didn’t show a single game that shows what the system is capable of. I mean, obviously this system is no more powerful than the 360. But something, anything, to highlight a solid Nintendo franchise with HD graphics. They rolled over. They blew it.
By Disco on Jun 6, 2012
I terribly agree with you. Nintendo had everything to lose this year. All they had to do was hit one nice homerun, and they couldn’t even do that.
It’s even more pathetic when the best games that were shown for the Wii U weren’t even Nintendo titles (Lego City and ZombiU).
Where were the specs for the Wii U? What about online capabilities? What about online services? What about 3DS connectivity? What about online accounts?
By thomas on Jun 6, 2012
^ Nintendo never, ever talks about specs anymore. But you can find part of them online. Not sure how revealing more of the services would’ve made them "win" E3, but okay. The first party stuff will come, I’m not worried about that. They are definitely shooting themselves in the foot (losing money big time) by not going all-out though. They seem extremely hesitant to show stuff at E3 that’s more than half a year ahead, when Sony and MS have no problem showing games that are 2-3 years away.