N-Philes

The Nintendo Press Conference Report

Posted June 12th 2009 by Derrick Lutz.

I wasn't sure it was worth writing this.  The press conference was more than a week ago, and it contained nothing that I care even a little bit about.  I didn't even really see it in person; Nintendo's strategy was to stick 90% of the media into a big theater with a live video feed of the press conference which was actually happening in a much smaller part of the venue.  My unending desire to hate things persevered in the end, so here is my summary of everything shown at the E3 2009 Nintendo press conference.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii
Release Date: Holiday 2009
A great demonstration of a classic game design problem/solution.  What do you do when you have no new ideas?  Make it multiplayer!  Four-player side-scrolling Mario.  It's like LittleBigPlanet except without all the things that made that game cool.  Also, there's a propeller suit.  If I had one of those, I'd be wearing it every day.  Those things are sweet.

Wii Fit Plus
Release Date: TBA 2009
Six new strength and yoga activities.  Customizable exercise routines.  Fifteen new balance games.  One of the new balance games has you jumping over rolling logs; Cammie Dunaway desperately tries to make it relatable to us as it's like being "in Mario's shoes."  I wonder if this is what Nintendo thinks will stimulate their traditional fanbase.  It'd be one thing if they totally ignored us, but it's more like they're always trying to get our attention with stuff, not realizing that it's total crap.

Wii Sports Resort with Wii MotionPlus
Release Date: July 23, 2009
Reggie comes out to present a trailer for Wii Sports Resort and the MotionPlus.  Then a stage demo of the same.  The game starts up with a parachute drop onto the Resort island.  I guess that'd be cool the first time, if you're into this type of thing.  Next is archery and basketball.  Again, it all looks fine, but it's just another minigame collection.  There's got to be more to a game than the most basic mechanics and a score tally.

A Mess of Random Games
We take a quick run through some third-party games in development for Nintendo systems.  Tiger Woods 10, Virtua Tennis, Red Steel 2, Final Fantasy Crystal Bearers, Kingdom Hearts DS.  Next is Mario and Luigi Bowser's Inside Story, coming to the US in Fall 2009.  Golden Sun DS announced.  James Patterson Woman's Murder Club Games of Passion.  COP: The Recruit.

This is the point where I start wondering if Nintendo isn't just accidentally clueless about what their longtime fans want, but instead are purposefully fucking with our heads.  They have to know how bad this stuff is, don't they?  Why would you show this in your media briefing?  Even Ubisoft didn't show COP at their conference, and it's their game.  I don't even know where to begin with the Woman's Murder Club.

And then there was a game called Style Savvy.  You know, for tweens!

DSi
Cammie tells us the DSi is capturing the passion of players, then presents a man-on-the-street interview type video of said players.  Some choice quotes: "I'm a very on-the-go person so it's a very on-the-go system for me." "I love being able to carry it around wherever I want. Pop it open, pop it closed." "The internet's gonna be awesome."

Nintendo hops on the user-created content bandwagon.  Flipnotes Studio lets you create page-flip animations this summer; Mario Vs Donkey Kong Minis March Again has a level designer; WarioWare DIY lets you create minigames from the ground up.  This is probably the coolest stuff Nintendo showed at their press conference.   Then they tried to shoehorn uploading DSi photos to Facebook into this section.

Gamer Groups
Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo, came out to talk about the three groups of gamers.  According to Nintendo they are active, never, and maybe.  There are a bunch in the maybe category, Nintendo wants to convert them into active gamers.  We get it, recruiting new gamers.  If you want the New York Times to write a fluff piece about how great you are, set up a meeting with them.  This is a gaming press event, we aren't going to write yet another article about how great it is that Nintendo is supposedly expanding the gaming audience.

Wii Vitality Sensor
It measures your pulse.  I could actually see something like this being cool in an action game like Left 4 Dead, where the AI director changes the pace of the game depending on how well you're doing.  To have it alter the pace of the game based on an accurate measurement of how excited you are would be kinda neat.  But you couldn't play it with that stupid thing on your finger.  And we all know it's just going to be used for fitness/yoga software on the Wii.

Super Mario Galaxy 2
What do you do when you have no new ideas and you already announced a multiplayer game?  Make a direct sequel with the exact same premise and design!  I wonder what Miyamoto is doing these days.  Clearly he couldn't be working on Mario games.

Hardcore Gamer Games
Reggie tells us he feels our pain, and that third-parties are providing content for all the serious gamers out there.  Sega is publishing The Conduit.  It's a sci-fi shooter that looks and plays pretty generically.  On any other platform I'm positive it would be completely ignored.  Capcom is publishing Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles.  It's a rail shooter.  EA is publishing Dead Space Extraction.  It's also a rail shooter, but it looks kinda fun.  If it has decent limb dismemberment like the original Dead Space, then I'd probably enjoy it.

Metroid: Other M
After those three third-party hardcore games, Reggie asks "What about Nintendo itself?"  Hey I was thinking the same thing.  Looks like a more actiony Metroid, that might be good.  Team Ninja is developing this game in collaboration with Nintendo.  Now, I'm not a fan of Team Ninja's previous work, so it doesn't really make a difference to me either way.  But didn't the main creative guy and his core team leave the company a short time ago?  So why should we care that it's Team Ninja?  Also... What about Nintendo itself?

Final Thoughts

This press conference more than any other reminded me of that creepy annual Wal-Mart convention where the CEOs talk about how great Wal-Mart is and everyone cheers about it and "we don't call our employees employees, they are associates," and not-so-secretly everyone knows most employees are treated like crap and their business practices undermine competition and destroy local economies.  Their success has made them think they are above criticism, so instead of actually changing or improving, they just try to put a more positive marketing spin on things as they are.  Nintendo is the Wal-Mart of videogame publishers.

Tags: Nintendo, E3-09

Posted in: News, Gaming

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