E3 2011: Nintendo

Nintendo

The Legend of Zelda

I’m not that interested in Skyward Sword but the orchestra certainly provided a strong opening for the conference and there’s something rather heart-warming about seeing Miyamoto presenting his games. The Ocarina of Time 3D remake is looking good and it’s really cool that they’re giving out a free soundtrack to people who register the game and that they’re putting out Four Swords as a free download.

Nintendo 3DS

Nintendo showcased pretty much what I expected them too to begin with but it was good to see them also making true on the promise of a lot of the third party stuff on that system. One thing that I didn’t expect to be enthused about was Kid Icarus: Uprising. I really don’t like Pit’s voice and I’m a little sceptical about how well they can do the multiplayer but not only does it look like a fun game in its own right but it’s also promising to see Nintendo allowing something completely radical and different to be done with one of their first-party IPs.

I was also really happy (and I mean really happy) to see a Luigi’s Mansion sequel is being made. My early history with video games is a very odd and sparsely populated one, but as weird as it may be one of the games I really loved in my early teens was Luigi’s Mansion. It won’t be quite the same experience on a handheld but I’ve seen that, surprisingly, I’m not the only one who had a soft spot for the original Luigi’s Mansion. On the subject of Excitebike on the 3DS, again, free Nintendo games are always a good thing.

Wii U

I loved Gary Whitta’s analogy of the pre-announcement rumours of the Wii U making the console sound like the video game equivalent of the Homer Car. From the rumours I couldn’t possibly imagine how this controller was going to fit together with any of the possible different configurations of features, but Nintendo look to have designed it as well as seems possible. My biggest worry with it is still how awkward it’s going to be to hold considering its size, the fact that the two hands must be placed around the top corners of the tablet and that you may have to switch between face buttons and the touch screen.

My worries have been somewhat assuaged by people who’ve had hands-on time with the controller saying it’s both light and comfortable, but I didn’t really like the disconnected feeling of the main controller and nunchuck on the original Wii and I can’t be but be a little anxious about how I’ll feel about the Wii U controller. One thing that the design of this controller really shows though is that Nintendo are still invested in appealing to the “core” audience. Yes, it has its camera, its touch screen, and all those other shiny doodads but just looking at the layout of the buttons it’s clear that in some ways this is a lean back towards the conventional gamepad and thus an indication by Nintendo that they care about those invested in conventional video games having a practical interface.

I think Nintendo’s biggest mistake in the conference was the lack of information on the console itself. Many professional journalists seemed to emerge from the briefing unsure of exactly how this thing was supposed to tie back to any new console or whether it did at all. I’d like to talk about the technicalities console itself, but the continuing scarcity of any full list of technical specifications for this thing makes that a bit difficult and frankly I find it a little odd that it wasn’t something they wanted to put out soon after the press conference, even if they didn’t want to get into the specifics of the console itself during the briefing.

From what was shown of the games on the console at the briefing it looks like they’ve got a fair amount of power behind it and with the third-party developers they’ve got working for them and the graphics the console seems capable of producing it looks like more “core” games beyond Nintendo’s first party selection could be a significant part of the Wii Us library, but exactly how big a part does depend on the power of the hardware. If they have a machine here capable of running games approaching the level of the 360 and PS3s abilities then I think one thing that’s really going to be important to the third-party developers putting out cross-platform experiences on the Wii U will be how long it’s going to be before Microsoft’s and Sony’s next consoles hit. The successors to the 360 and PS3 are likely to be far more powerful than the Wii U and I think that gap will once again mean that “core” games consumers just won’t be turning to Nintendo’s console to get their fix, the technical gap between the consoles will be just too large. This will leave Nintendo with a window during which they really need to get in as many “core” third-party developers as possible if they want to satiate that market.

As always though the casual market is where the majority of the money is at and I think Nintendo are on track to making some serious money here, how much money they’ll make in comparison to the Wii sales and sales of other motion control platforms, I think it’s hard for us to make any solid predictions. Apparently the Wii U reveal did little good for Nintendo’s shares but this could likely be a reaction to Nintendo’s new console being a simply risky venture as opposed to a flat-out bad one. I mean when they first showed the Wii a lot of people thought they’d simply gone insane and now Nintendo are the ones laughing their way to the bank.

I must say after everything that’s been shown I’m not sure exactly how much I like or dislike Nintendo’s new console, but I’ll tell you one thing, nobody managed to get the quite as hyped up as they did.

Batman: Arkham City

Now this is the game I was definitely most surprised to see on the Wii U, but it was certainly one of the things I was most anticipating at the conference this year and it hasn’t disappointed. It looks to be as good if not better than Arkham Asylum in providing a platform for the Batman universe’s spectrum of colourful characters and for granting players the feeling that they are the god damn Batman, especially in terms of providing more detective work alongside the already fantastic combat system. The gameplay with Catwoman also looks like a pleasant variation on the regular gameplay, in fact to the point where I hope there’s a considerable amount of Catwoman play in the main missions.

Duder, It’s Over

Well, I don’t think there’s much else to say except that I hoped to get hype during this year’s E3 and hype was thoroughly gotten. Thanks for reading, good luck, and that was E3.

-Gamer_152