I just finished watching Nintendo’s media conference at E3. And I am seriously pissed off.
First off, let me say that I enjoyed Microsoft’s media conference yesterday. Fallout 3 looks awesome. Infinite Undiscovery and The Last Remnant look great too. And the final announcement about FFXIII being on Xbox 360…was actually a decent earth-shattering announcement. Great for me because my main system of choice these days is a 360. Not so great for Oshi because he bought his PS3 years ago because he figured that FFXIII would be a PS3 exclusive. But now that this has been proven untrue, at least we still know that Final Fantasy Versus XIII (the game I’m looking more forward) will still be exclusively PS3 (for now). So Oshi can rest easy. But seriously the PS3 has been overall a disappointment. A vast majority of the games we have for it can also be purchased for the 360. I’m hoping more exclusives come out of the Sony conference because, let’s face it, Sony needs a fire lit under their asses and they need to realize that their system is in trouble. Give us good games. But I digress. (Edit: Well, so much for that. God of War 3 and Resistance 2 were cool, but the rest? WTF Sony?)
Anyway, the Nintendo conference happened to fall during my lunch hour, so I was looking forward to watching it live. Nintendo has always been hush, hush, preferring to release their big surprises during events like E3 and TGS. Last year, they released information on the Wii Fit, which I had been looking forward to…until its release. Now, since I didn’t think I’d have to reserve it, I’m having issues even finding it. I would love to have it to help supplement my fitness program and use it to track my progress. But alas, why would I expect Nintendo to make enough Wii Fits? People still have issues trying to find a Wii.
To begin with, Nintendo began their conference with a cheesy opening showing a whole bunch of people with cheesy grins on their faces. Their opening supported their theme for the year—bringing smiles to people’s faces. After that was a demo of a new snowboarding game (using the still hard to find Wii balance board) and a whole bunch of boring statistics about how they’ve had increased sales with the general mainstream, particularly females. Blah, blah, blah. They put out some info on the new Animal Crossing games and Wii Sports Resort, which actually sound decent. Then they put out some information on their upcoming DS library, nothing which sounded particularly impressive. (Sorry, I’m not a big GTA fan)
Oshi left the room about halfway through, shouting over his shoulder to let him know if Nintendo came up with anything interesting. Not long after that, they started hyping up for the big announcement and showed some guy with the Wii mote, nunchuck and the balance board playing air drums. Yes, you heard me right. Then they brought out Miyamoto-san to make the “big announcement” for the year to introduce….Wii Music. A game that doesn’t make you hit specific keys to go along with a musical score or has any type of strategy involved. The premise? You play “air instruments” using the Nintendo peripherals mentioned above. That’s it. To demonstrate, Miyamoto-san brought a few people onstage with him to start a band to play the Mario theme. Unfortunately, when they all got onstage, the only instrument left for Miyamoto-san to play was the cowbell. THE COWBELL??!! ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME??!! So after they got settled with their “instruments”, the entire group of people onstage began to “play”—while looking like complete idiots in the process.
So this is what I wasted my lunch hour on? Their big announcement was air instruments?! Are you kidding me?! At the launch of the Wii, Nintendo talked about branching out and reaching the mainstream, but they also said that they were not going to abandon their core gamers. They brought out Twilight Princess, Metriod Prime 3: Corruption, Super Mario Galaxy, Super Smash Brothers Brawl. All solid. But apparently, Nintendo thinks that since it made good on its promise that it doesn’t need to continue making the great games and continue the franchises that they are known for. They’re reaching so far to get the mainstream guys, the core gamers (like me) feel let down and pissed off. They couldn’t have announced a new Zelda game in the works? Or perhaps a new iteration of Metroid on the DS? The only franchise they haven’t forgotten about is—Pokemon. Oh yippee.
So apparently Nintendo has abandoned the core gamer to get the mainstreamer and rake in millions of dollars. That makes great business sense. But it leaves me frustrated and sorely disappointed. Years ago, I used to be a hard-core Nintendo die hard. If you even mentioned Sega or Sony to me, I’d fiercely declare my loyalty to Nintendo, saying it was THE only system to play and that the other ones didn’t exist in my mind. That changed when the Final Fantasy series leapt to the Playstation, but I still had a soft spot for the guys who brought me Mario and Link. Not anymore. F**k you Nintendo.
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tired
pissed off
chipper