Nintendo Apologizes For Horrible E3
And frankly, they should. Nintendo’s E3 conference was slightly less painful than having my hand skewered by a power drill, much like in that Bioshock trailer. But, I digress… the real crime, according to Iwata, was ignoring the hardcore gaming market.
Iwata told Forbes.com, “If there is any perception that Nintendo is ignoring the core gamers, it’s a misunderstanding and we really want to get rid of that misunderstanding by any means. We are sorry about [the E3] media briefings, specifically for those who were expecting to see Nintendo show something about ‘Super Mario’ or ‘Legend of Zelda.’”
Could Iwata miss the point any more than he already has? The reason we (core gamers) have this “misunderstanding” is that Nintendo has done very little for us. They gave us a ton of lip service at last year’s E3, but have done little to nothing since then. They haven’t done anything to court 3rd-party developer hits, like what Microsoft has done with Square Enix. Nintendo has done a great job with the DS. Some of the most unaplogetically hardcore titles in handheld gaming are found on the DS, but almost all of these are not Mario or Zelda games. Apologizing for not showing off Mario or Zelda is like running someone over and then saying sorry because you didn’t use your blinker.
Anyway, not everything Nintendo has done lately has been pure garbage. There are getting to be some totally sweet WiiWare titles, and there are a number of gamers that are super excited for Animal Crossing: City Folk (even if I’m not one of them).
Oh, and while we’re giving out free advice… Nintendo, PLEASE refrain from having your execs participate in on-stage banter while demonstrating games. I hadn’t seen this much buffoonery since the E3 ’06 Sony briefing. Ugh.
Tags: e3, garbage, Nintendo
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this is just me but do people really consider the Nintendo Wii a hardcore company? i never have i have always considered it more kid/family friendly games. i think the reason they didn’t announce those games is just the simple fact they didn’t have them ready yet and also because they know that people will purchase the older Zelda/Mario titles. /rant
You are right. But, to me, “hardcore” means much more than just Mario and Zelda. (In fact, I’d say that most of the Mario and some of the Zelda games are NOT hardcore at all.) Bringing some better 3rd-party titles to the Wii is all they would have to do. Again, look at what MS has been able to do to bring formerly exclusive developers to their platform.
“Bla bla bla.” –Nintendo.
It really doesn’t matter what Nintendo says to the blogs now anyway because the hardcore gamers — those are the gamers that read blogs — are a tiny fraction of Nintendo’s market now. They don’t have to care about the hardcore, and their E3 presentation shows it. If you could ignore the very whiny vocal minority in your customer base that causes you nothing but trouble with reams of digital angry ink and STILL make vast amounts of money, wouldn’t you? I sure would, and Nintendo has put the writing on the wall.
If you like what Nintendo offers, cool. Dig in! But if you don’t, look elsewhere. There are two other major consoles to choose from.
Exactly Paul. The Wii is a family machine, and they do that well – no one else does it so they have a monopoly on this.