Nintendo is dead.

[P.P.A.]

I just watched the live stream of Nintendo's press conference. They announced ONE new real game, that being the highly predictable Animal Crossing for Wii (coming with a microphone, "Wii Speak"). Other than that, casual shit as far as the eye can see. Wii Sports Resort bundled with the WIi Motion Plus); a Wii balance board snowboarding game; Wii Music, where you randomly press buttons or waggle around to make music play, GTA CHina Town for DS, which was brielfy mentioned and then ignored again; a Star Wars Clone Wars (the cartoon) comnversion, another Raving Rabbids game, a CoD and Pokémon Rangers 2.

That's it, I'm getting a PS3 this Christmas. Fuck you, post-Wii Nintendo. Fuck you.

[Rob-Bert]

They're dead, yet they're somehow killing the other two systems in sales.

This is one of the many reasons why I saved all of my old systems and games.

[P.P.A.]

They're dead, yet they're somehow killing the other two systems in sales.

This is one of the many reasons why I saved all of my old systems and games.

I'll soon get a modded SNES so I can play imported games on that.
That, and no matter what I will eternally love my Gamecube.

[K2J]

Brawl didn't get announced at the presser. There's always a possibility that more gamer stuff will turn up this week.

Also, GTA on DS. What.

[Majestic Joey]

MADWORLD looks cool though.

[Locit]

What is wrong with you people.

[Segaholic2]

That was hands-down the worst E3 press conference I've ever seen.

[K2J]

I thought last year's was worse in terms of the conference itself. Reggie spent a good 15 minutes (the first 15 minutes) talking numbers with nothing else. At least they tried to promote their third parties this time, which is something Nintendo's not in the habit of doing.

[James McGeachie]

It wasn't great but Wii Sports Resort and the MotionPlus are big things, especially the MotionPlus. The controls really did look vastly improved, if that's implimented well into further Wii development then we'll have titles worth caring about.

[Esrever]

What is with Nintendo and their new habit of not announcing games until less than six months before they come out? I think this is the real reason their last two e3 conferences have been such snoozers. All they announced today were the games being released from October to December, which at Nintendo's rate of production works out to about one big A title and a couple of smaller ones. That's a perfectly reasonable number of titles for them to release in such a narrow window... but how excited can you get about two or three games, right?

It's certainly a big change from how it used to be, when games like Twilight Princess or Mario Galaxy would be previewed well in advance. And it's extremely different from how Sony and MS handle their press, with games like MGS4 and Halo 3 shown and hyped literally years in advance. With Nintendo, everything beyond Christmas is always a total mystery, and I think that's what makes gamers so nervous. When you have absolutely no idea what's coming, it gives you the opportunity to worry that whatever it is will be fantastically lame.

[Ritz]

Since the console's very inception, Super Mario Galaxy and Brawl have been the only two games to even remotely interest me, and I've spoiled enough of Brawl for myself through Youtube that it'd probably only interest me for about a month before my interest waned, anyway. But even though I wasn't actually expecting anything, just hearing about how overtly monotonous this conference was has somehow completely turned me off to the system in one fell swoop. I'm having a hard time seeing the correlation myself, honestly- I just spontaneously lost interest! I guess I've just decided on a subconscious level that I won't be associating myself with any console that touts Wii Sports Resort as a flagship title.

Sony's conference had better be stupid good, as they're already poised to clench me firmly upon the vesicles and heft me towards their cause entirely (Even though I won't ever get the a chance to own a PS3).

[Esrever]

Oh wow, I just noticed that Wii Sports Resort isn't even coming out until next spring!

OK, forget what I said before. Nintendo must have other Wii games lined up for the holidays that they just haven't announced yet. There's no way that Animal Crossing and Wii Music are the only titles they have coming out before Christmas. Nintendo loves money too much to release such an anemic holiday lineup.

But what else will we get? Kid Icarus? Or Wii Lawn Bowling?

[Wooduck51]

GAAAAAHHHH! where the heck is the pseudo-sequel to twilight princess I'm waiting for?

That conference bit, I bet they release a sock evaporating trailer for something on the last day.

[Zeta]

Wii Sports Resort looks like it actually might be decent. Especially if they make it a Wii Sports / Nintendogs hybrid.

What is with Nintendo and their new habit of not announcing games until less than six months before they come out? I think this is the real reason their last two e3 conferences have been such snoozers. All they announced today were the games being released from October to December, which at Nintendo's rate of production works out to about one big A title and a couple of smaller ones. That's a perfectly reasonable number of titles for them to release in such a narrow window... but how excited can you get about two or three games, right?

The president of Nintendo more or less said "Games get too over-hyped if they're announced a year or so ahead and then they turn out to be a disappointment and the excitement wears off and you get sick of hearing about their development, so our new policy is not to announce games until 6-3 months before release." So don't expect any major announcements from Nintendo until mid-fall at earliest.

[Green Gibbon!]

It's not like Nintendo needs to hype anything. The majority of Wii sales are to the casual market, all the people who made Wii Play and Wii Fit the top-selling games on the console - people, for the most part, who don't even know what E3 is.

[Zeta]

They really don't need to hype anything. Casual fans of Nintendo will pick up their casual titles anyways and the hardcore fans will pick up their A-list main franchise titles anyways, as well. They could just toss Wii Sports II anywhere and it would sell and just put up post-it notes around town saying "New Zelda December 4th at GameStop - come with your wallet" and it would sell, too.

[Green Gibbon!]

Also, Wii Music and Wii Sports Resort are going to sell hundreds of thousands more copies than anything that might be considered exciting to the "gamer" crowd.

[gr4yJ4Y]

At one point during the Wii's life (thus far), I thought Nintendo was going to use the money earned from casual games to make grander hardcore experiences.

This is pretty much a repeat of last year's conference, really. So I'm not too worried. The XBox 360 is looking awfully tempting though.

[Zeta]

They confirmed that new Zelda was on the way, but nothing besides that. Duh.

[James McGeachie]

I'm gonna hold out some small hope that the reason we didn't see much of the "hardcore" content (assuming there is much) is because it's early in development due to a long technical phase working out how to properly use the improved MotionPlus control in the key Nintendo franchises in a way that truly benefits them.

Apparently it's been hinted that MotionPlus might be shipped with every Wii remote at some point so it feels like they will actually put some effort in with game development. Perhaps Wii Sports Resort will be the successor to Wii Play for the remote pack in game.

[P.P.A.]

And suddenly "software sales" rocket again!

[Oompa Star]

It's kind of funny that you guys bitch about super casual gaming and yet you make fun of real gamers who set records and win tournaments.

[Ritz]

We don't make fun of people who set records and win tournaments, we make fun of people who overlook entire game mechanics until roughly 1/3 of the game proper remains for the sake of balance, the people who dilute the gameplay 'till it's completely lost it's charm because they aren't man enough to play the game the way it was meant to be played. Yeah, we cap on those nukkas so bad.

[Isuka]

I couldn't possibly agree with someone any more than I do with this... /v/tard, of all people.

Like many of you, I watched the E3 conferences, and like also many, was left disappointed and frustrated by pretty much all three. I was particularly eager for Microsoft's and Sony's, but I decided to watch Nintendo's as well to see what they are doing and planning on doing as the market leader. And I did not like what I saw.

Nintendo has become the shallowest company of the three, and because of their financial success, they are leading along the other two in a similar path.

"Shallowest?" you may ask, "how can you accuse Nintendo, of all three companies, of being the shallowest? They're the ones who are deliberately forgoing trying to deliver the best and most shiny graphics! They're the ones trying to push forward a new way of playing games! They're the ones not caught in trying to deliver the brownest, gruffest shooter in the market! They're the ones trying to innovate, and trying to expand the market!"

You may or may not actually say that, but I imagine (though I cannot be certain) that's the general gist of what a person might say as a counterargument. Maybe it's stuffing words in your mouth, maybe it's a strawman argument, but listen to what I have to say first.

Nintendo is caught in the act of prefering flash over substance no better than the companies/consumers following the "graphics > gameplay" mantra that has plagued the videogame industry since its inception. However, now they are doing it in a new way, a way that we're not familiar to seeing so we don't recognize it as readily.

They've become too caught up in trying to have a "new" way with interacting with games, that they've become blind to what the games are or how good they are, it's just that it's a piece of software to showcase their way to interact with it. Nintendo has stopped caring about the games themselves in their quest for "new" controls.

I can't even really say that the Wiimote is all that innovative. For the most part in the games I've played, the motion sensing just takes the place of a control stick, or the pressing of a particular button. Surely a new way to perform that action, but not really innovative or pushing the boundries of how to control something. But Nintendo doesn't care about that, it's just the fact that it's new to have motion sensing for console videogames. The controller is all they really care about, and it's showing in their games.

It became even plainer in E3, especially with the introduction of other peripherals. An "expansion" pack for their wiimote to make it better and more accurate, essentially what the wiimote should have been (and what they were making it out to be) in the first place, and a "microphone" of sorts to talk with friends online while playing Animal Crossing. The issue was, these were being placed as the center of the presentation, they were the news, while the games were used merely to showcase them. Games were not the point of their Wii presentation.

Even scarier was Iwata's talk. He was talking of trying to keep, essentially, ahead of the motion sensing curve in regards to Sony and Microsoft, that they had to keep the experience "fresh". Not of trying to provide the best gaming experience with their new controls, not trying to show off the interesting applications that could be used of their motion sensing-centric nature, but simply that they'd have the "newest" and "freshest" kind of controls around. In the end, Nintendo cares more about "new", "fresh", or quirky their controls (and its various peripherals) are than the gaming experience you can get with it.

To Nintendo, how you use and hold your controller is more important than the game in your console. They are trying to blind everyone to this by focusing so much on what their controller can do, how "intuitive" it is, how much easier it is for people to get into gaming, etc., etc.

To them, the money is in pitching a new way to interact with games, not in the games themselves.

Games don't matter; the fact that your controller is motion sensing does.

And when the market leader takes such a stance, the industry will try to follow.

Although I don't agree with the market leader point given Microsoft's third-party market dominance, everything else is more or less my opinion.

[Segaholic2]

It's kind of funny that you guys bitch about super casual gaming and yet you make fun of real gamers who set records and win tournaments.

Extremism on either end of the spectrum falls within the realm of faggotry.