Oh, boy. You'd think from reading the press that Nintendo declared its own death sentence yesterday. "The games are pretty boring," they say. "The company was blown out of the water by its next gen rivals," they say. Sony and Microsoft are synonymous with roof-raising blockbusters while Nintendo is left whimpering in a corner.
But of course, as usual, the gaming press is simply out for blood. For whatever reason, they'll never forgive Nintendo for endorsing a game that might be enjoyed by a 9-year-old girl.
It doesn't matter that the third party support is finally bringing its game face (Silent Hill, Dead Space, Cursed Mountain, Red Steel 2).
It doesn't matter that the DS remains the out-and-out king of RPGs (Golden Sun, Kingdom Hearts, Bowser's Inside Story).
It doesn't matter that Mario's treating us to a sequel to what's widely considered the "game of the generation," and to yet another experience that's completely unprecedented in the Mario universe.
It doesn't even matter that Metroid is making a shocking, triumphant comeback under the Team Ninja banner.
Nintendo has ruined gaming.
The impressions from the E3 floor are overwhelmingly positive, but of course what does it matter that the games are fun, if Microsoft Natal will only come along to destroy the Wii a year from now? Who cares that the games are fun if Nintendo doesn't have access to Sony's great exclusives like Uncharted 2 or (scoff) Mod Nation Racers?
How many times does Nintendo have to shrug off the supposed threat of their competitors before everyone finally wakes up and realizes that the game has changed? That the "hardcore" gaming market is unsustainable? That bringing new gamers into the fold is the only way to keep gaming alive?
The only thing that matters is this:
Yes, a handful of "casual" games plus a giant load of core games equals a big lose for the Big N.
And what do you call Sony's laughable, half-hearted attempt at widening its appeal with a token Hannah Montana pack-in on the PSP? Hmm, haven't really seen that one brought up by anyone who's anyone.
Anyway, that's enough ranting.
The reality is that Nintendo gave more than generous attention to its core gaming population. As a daily user of Wii Fit, I'm incredibly excited for the Plus expansion. At the same time, Professor Layton 2, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and Metroid: Other M interest me just as much. All in all, I saw a good dozen Wii and DS games that I'd love to get my hands on ASAP.
Let's not begrudge the scant moments that Cammie Dunaway spent on some Women's Mystery game or a fashion show simulator. Those were tiny snippets of an overall conference which began and ended with the kind of power that only Nintendo brings to the table.
As the owner of a site called Nintendo Fanboy, it's not terribly surprising that I'm flagging Nintendo as the clear winner in E3 2009. But let's face it - no matter who you think "won" the conference (whatever that means), the abysmal treatment of Nintendo's 90 minutes of fame is nothing short of ridiculous.
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I have to admit, Sony had quite a show yesterday. It wasn't the games that impressed me (we knew about pretty much all of them anyway). It is pretty funny that both Microsoft and Sony have a Mario Kart clone in the works, though.
No, the interesting part of this conference was the motion control demonstration using a combination of the EyeToy and a... glorified flashlight.
Sony's new controller kicks Microsoft Natal all over town for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that it looks a lot further along and more in line with what we can expect of modern console technology. (As I alluded to yesterday, Natal is too far-reaching to make good on many of its promises.) But despite what I consider to be a Sony win, there are still a couple of very important problems to overcome.
Perhaps the biggest question is, where were the games? We saw a terrific tech demo, but heard nothing about what kind of software support might be on its way for the hardware - either first-party, or more importantly, third-party. Sure, it looks cool and all, but how can you say this controller comes out next year without making a tangible, good-faith effort to tell us what you're going to do to make it profitable?
Where Microsoft afflicted itself with this same problem at the beginning of the week, remember that Nintendo had multiple games prepared for the debut of the Wii Remote mere years ago. The technology isn't going to sell on its own: you need something fun to go with it.
The second issue, which might not be so important if we weren't talking about a company that's hemorrhaging money out of every orifice, is the question of how this product is going to be packaged and marketed. Sony's motion solution offers no significant advantages over the Wii Motion Plus, yet it's arguably more complicated and possibly more expensive to produce. (This depends on whether Sony ends up using the $30 EyeToy, or whether they need a more sophisticated camera to get the results they want. The "wand" controllers could cost even less than the Wii Remote if they don't include any more technology than was demonstrated yesterday.)
In addition, the Wii Motion Plus comes out next month, and this Camera Wand combination is supposedly at least 9 months away. (My guess is that it will be delayed.) It's clear that neither Sony nor Microsoft will be capturing any of the Wii's casual audience no matter what - it's far too late in this generation's life cycle for that, and the Wii's new attachment is getting a huge head start anyway.
Ultimately, therefore, the success of Sony's new peripheral leans heavily on its hardcore adoption. The potential is there, but it could go either way; On the one hand, the "hardcore" have traditionally raised their noses at any hint of motion control. On the other hand, already we are seeing arguments from both Microsoft and Sony fanboys about which company has the better motion control solution. This means that their disdain might have been simple hypocrisy all this time - not an objection to motion control at all, but rather a jealousy of Nintendo's incredible success with the concept.
We will see in time.
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If High Voltage is trying too hard, Microsoft is trying even harder. After seeing the far-reaching plans on display during yesterday's presentation, it's become clear to me that Nintendo will go another year without competition from the Xbox 360. (Sony will continue to be irrelevant to Nintendo no matter what happens at their conference.)
The Mario Kart clone looked like a desperate attempt to reach out to the casual market, and of course it must be free to have any hope of catching on. This ploy has been in Microsoft's playbook for a long time, perhaps the most famous example being Internet Explorer in Netscape's heyday.
But things turned downright ridiculous when Project Natal was trotted out in front of an incredulous audience. The technology's obviously early, but that doesn't excuse the ambitious video mockups we saw. Here's a recap in case you missed it:
This trailer was fully intended to wow the press and get the critical buzz going (PC World certainly took the bait), but the fine print says it all: "Product vision: actual features and functionality may vary." In other words, we saw nothing more than smoke and mirrors; a number of the features "shown" are likely not even in development at all.
Stephen Totilo at Kotaku gave us another demonstration of how Natal has generated unrealistic expectations. Totilo's describes his experience with Peter Molyneux's "Milo" in a positive light, but two statements simply can't escape unnoticed:
[Molyneux] repeatedly cautioned that some of what I would experience with the game were "tricks."
The Milo demo was partially being manipulated by a developer who was sitting nearby, and I couldn't tell if he was merely calibrating the game or how much he was pulling its strings.
All in all, Microsoft certainly managed to put on a show. But I'll be surprised if Natal sees the light of day even a year from now. Even if it does, it will end up going the way of Sony's EyeToy: big on the promises, underwhelming on the delivery.
Nintendo's conference starts in less than an hour!
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Iwata Asks is one of Nintendo's greatest features these days. These articles give us so much insight into the company's inner workings that it's amazing their competitors don't seem to have enough information to start competing with Nintendo on a level playing field.
The latest Iwata Asks is an interview with some of the DSi's engineers. Although you see many sites reporting some of the nifty little factoids contained within the discussion, few have pointed out the underlying ideas behind the new DS's hardware design.
The most interesting part of this episode, to me, is that it doesn't mention anything about the DSi's significantly increased hardware specs. In spite of the fact that it sports a doubled processor speed and quadrupled RAM, you don't see these things anywhere in the interview. You know that if Microsoft or Sony were in Nintendo's position, they would spend half the article talking about what developers can do with those features to make portable games with better graphics.
The reason Iwata and the engineers don't talk about the upgraded performance is that, to Nintendo, that aspect is probably the least significant addition to the DSi. From a hardware standpoint, you could almost consider the DSi a full successor/replacement to the DS. But Iwata even notes during the interview that they didn't want people to feel as though the new handheld is leaving the DS or DS Lite in the dust.
This is an interesting attitude to take since companies who deal with technology thrive on sales of new products. But the upgrades discussed in Iwata Asks seem more geared to catch the DS up with the Wii in terms of blue ocean appeal. You have the cameras, you have the new image and audio capabilities, you have DSiWare and the SD card slot. You no longer have to power off the hardware to make it recognize that you've changed the game cartridge.
Of course, another reason to play down the importance of the DSi's greater power is that most game developers won't be able to take advantage of that power until there is a significant installed base who can buy those games. (From all we've heard so far, games that use these upgrades won't be able to run at all on an older DS, even in a "graceful degrade" scenario.)
I look forward to seeing how the DSi performs outside of Japan. The DS Lite will surely continue to see great sales due to its lower price, but how quickly will consumers adopt its successor? Will most people wait for a price drop (which would likely accompany the permanent departure of the Lite), or will they jump to upgrade as soon as possible?
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A NeoGAF member with a particularly large Club Nintendo registration library reports that he's received a special thank-you card and letter for his love of Nintendo products. He surely won't be the only one to receive such a gift, and it shows the Big N's attitude toward its customers remains just the same as always. The letter reads:
Dear Chris,
During the transition from My Nintendo to Club Nintendo, I noticed just how many product registrations you have on file, and I was very impressed!
I can tell you are a huge Nintendo fan, and I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for your years of support. It's loyal fans like you that make Nintendo strong.
Thank you again for being such a great supporter of Nintendo!
Sincerely,
NINTENDO OF AMERICA INC.
(signed) Reggie
Reggie Fils-Aime
President & COO
Hop past the break to see the list of games that scored Chris this letter.
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The first revision of Nintendo's 2009 release schedule is out for all three regions - and it looks as though the U.S. gets the short end of the stick this time around (although at least Kirby has a chance of being localized; this list will certainly change over time). Check out the American list below, and see how it matches up with Europe and Japan after the break.
U.S.
DS releases:
Nintendo DSi - Spring-Summer 2009
Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon - 2009/2/16
Pokemon Platinum - 2009/3/22
Personal Trainer: Walking - CY2009
Rhythm Heaven - CY2009
Mario and Luigi RPG 3 (Temp.) - 2009
Wii releases:
NEW PLAY CONTROL! MARIO POWER TENNIS - 2009/3
NEW PLAY CONTROL! PIKMIN - 2009/3
Wii Sports Resort - CY2009 First half
Punch-Out!! (Temp.) - CY2009 First half
Sin and Punishment 2 (Temp.) - 2009
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Nintendo's third-quarter financial report has rolled in, and it's a doozy - as anyone would expect, of course. Sales have grown 17% over the previous year, a staggering figure when you consider how many sales they were making even before that.
We've got one quarter left in the fiscal year, so the company is taking this opportunity to revise its predictions - specifically, the Big N expects global DS sales of 31.5 million (up 3% from previous expectations), and global Wii sales of 26.5 million (down 3%).
In any case, that's an awful lot of hardware. As of December 31, 2008, the LTD tally is:
- Shipments of Nintendo DS hardware were 96.22 million worldwide, along with more than 533 million games.
- Wii shipments reached nearly 45 million worldwide, along with over 312 million games.
- Shipment of Wii Fit reached 14 million, and Mario Kart Wii reached 13.67 million.
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(Direct link - explanatory video)
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This cute little chipp, whose primary habitat is the land of Rune Factory, wanted to wish you all a happy new year on behalf of Nintendo Fanboy. 2008 was an interesting ride for Nintendo fans, with many incredible titles making their debut throughout the year.
What will 2009 hold for us? Despite some analyst speculation, I have doubts about any new Zelda game (although I'd love to be wrong). But no matter what, we can expect some great surprises and look forward to the stuff we already know is coming. Scribblenauts, I'm looking at you!
The Wii Motion Plus is also due early this year, which will surely bring some exciting possibilities to the world of Wii.
Here's to the new year!
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What are you waiting for? Go register your games, claim your points, and enjoy!
Link: Club Nintendo
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Wario64, a NeoGAF user, was kind enough to post pictures of the Hanafuda cards he received from Club Nintendo. I was already planning to order these but couldn't manage to get my Club Nintendo account working before the site went down. Check out the post at NeoGAF for several pictures showing off his prize!
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Well, it's almost Christmas time. I know I'm hoping for some nice new DS and Wii games - what about you? I wish you all a great holiday season. For my part, I'll be taking off on a short vacation, which means Nintendo Fanboy will have an abbreviated update schedule for this week.
We'll be back to our regular schedule on Sunday. Until then, merry Christmas!
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Club Nintendo appeared online early last evening, but went back down as it was flooded with hits. We don't know whether the site couldn't handle the load, or whether it came online too early. In any case, it's back up for good now.
Currently there are 11 great prizes to be ordered based on the number of "coins" you have in your coffers. According to the FAQ, you can collect coins by purchasing Wii and DS games, as well as games on the Wii Shop Channel (this apparently means both WiiWare and Virtual Console games).
Time to get registering those games!
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The latest issue of Nintendo Power dropped a few tidbits regarding a project that's been in secret development all year: a new Wii-based game starring the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
So far, the game doesn't have an official name. In any case, it certainly won't be the first TMNT fighting game to grace a Nintendo console. What's particularly special about the title currently in development, however, is the calibre of its team members: some of them are fresh off a project we know as Super Smash Bros. Brawl, while still others are known for their work on Tecmo's revival of the Ninja Gaiden series.
While the mere presence of these people on the dev team doesn't guarantee that the game will reach SSBB proportions of awesome, it's not going to hurt its chances, either.
Via GoNintendo
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Well, it looks like the Club Nintendo web site has kinda-sorta made an appearance, albeit in the form of a teaser. From the little information available on the page, it looks like it'll basically be the same Club Nintendo you'd get in Japan or Europe: register your games and take a periodic survey to gain your rewards.
One difference? It looks like we'll be earning "coins" here in the States, as opposed to the stars you'd get elsewhere. Great way to differentiate the geographical lines, or something like that.
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