To say that I approached Nintendo's E3 showing with some apprehension wouldn't fully express my feelings towards the company. Maybe it was because of last year's gag-inducing presentation involving Cammie Dunaway, or maybe it's the fact that Nintendo had made it company policy in the past year to show that Shigeru Miyamoto has gone the gamers' version of senile. While I do appreciate that E3 has gone back to its original format, I couldn't help but feel underwhelmed. As an angry gamer, I look for someone to blame in all of the media buzz, and once again the finger seems to be pointing squarely at Nintendo.
While I wish I could continue this article with some semblance of polish, I don't think I can stop now that I've let out what I believe to be the cause of this "meh" feeling in the gaming world. If you're not getting that feeling, then let's review some of the facts before we shift our attention to the Big N.
For starters, as if to just shine a light on the entire industry, Left 4 Dead 2 was one of the top announcements at E3. I am a huge Left 4 Dead fan, and I can only think of a few criticisms to stamp onto it. Valve, listening to the fans, decided that they would correct this...by making a sequel. While the sequel tag might sound like good news at first, this denotes a new game, which means that instead of updating Source and instead of just being good little developers and creating a $10 DLC package that the existing horde would eat up immediately, we're left with the same near-decade old engine and will need foot the bill for Left 4 Dead to go makeup shopping. Hardly industry rattling news.
The PSP Go was also announced, and I'm just not seeing the allure of that either. Not only is the first true update to the PSP several years late, but it offers up nothing of note. True, you don't need UMD's anymore, but the entire point of the PSP was to offer up the portable alternative to the PS2, and that only works if you release PS2 games on it. Sure, an A+ title appears every so often, but that's like saying that the Washington Nationals are a worthwhile team because they win a game per week.
Microsoft seems to be the only one pressing their influence, with every major gaming conference showing off their ability to steal a prime Sony-exclusive and turn it into a selling point. This doesn't bother me, but going through each of these events without announcing a new hardware revision that promises to survive longer than three months doesn't make me want to buy their console any more.
Microsoft and Sony took their combined shot at the leader by officially announcing they would be ripping off the Wii with motion control options. Translation: Nintendo's time to make the Wii relevant ends when E3 ends.
It's been three years, and the Wii has had its chance, and has completely failed at everything it has gone out to accomplish. Supposedly, this system should be easy to develop for, but I don't think even Nintendo knows who bought a development kit. A GameStop wall lined with Cooking Mama, Hannah Montana, and every crappy Sonic release is not what gamers had in mind. Capcom seems to be the only company out there willing to put any stake in this console, and while the first party titles are very good, they were all games that could have been released on the GameCube. The announcement of Team Ninja taking on Metroid was amazing news, but it only proves that the N is not really committed to create new IP's.
Also, the Other M announcement bothered me in another way. It has took Nintendo three years to figure out that this was a type of game people wanted. The stigma of games needing to be mature is a completely misunderstood concept in gaming. No More Heroes and MadWorld were two titles that bothered me more than anything for the sole reason that they claimed to be "mature". Blood does not make a game mature. Harsh language doesn't do it either. Making a really visceral game half-heartedly does not mean that the so-called "hardcore gamers" are going to suddenly want Wiis.
Metroid's new offering instead shows that Nintendo is falling behind at a fast pace. Between that and Zelda, the Other M should have been made already in some way. Action, intensity, and a desire to be bold instead of safe are things that you can see in the new trailer, but what the Team Ninja team up means is that Nintendo is afraid to do it on their own. In 2010, it will have been four years since the Wii was released, and if the Other M is successful, how long will it take for anyone to follow up that sort of game on the console? Too long.
Nintendo has had several opportunities to be "other" system. It could have been the one to stand alongside your XBox and Playstation, but this year's E3 has proven that this is never going to happen. By now, we should have already had our promised 1:1 motion controls. Three years, and nothing has happened. Nintendo hasn't even perfected what it invented in the mainstream sense, and Microsoft and Sony now have a chance to overtake them and kill that advantage. Microsoft scored rights to Final Fantasy XIII last year, jumped into the Resident Evil series this year, and Nintendo's best response is Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles.
What is most bothersome, however, is how this has affected gaming. The Wii was, ideally, supposed to be a massive success for you: the gamer. When the system came out, the initial response was overwhelmingly positive, but the real possibilities didn't really get a lot of light until about two years into the life-cycle.
What if the Wii became the first console to embrace and define "arthouse" gaming?
I have to give credit to Yahtzee on this one, because even though I've been talking about this for years, he generally drove the point home in a couple of one liners. Killer 7, No More Heroes, and even the new A Boy and His Blob game have a great deal of creative promise to them. While Microsoft and Sony tossed away millions with their first-parties to create another Halo, Gear of War, and Killzone, Nintendo could turn a minor investment into something special without the constraint of development costs. Their system was tailor-built to make everything that didn't require photo-realism to run smooth, fast, and beautifully. The Wii was supposed to get our minds off of graphics for a generation and have us experience something truly different that had never been attempted. We got MadWorld.
What if the Wii followed through with their 1:1 immersion?
Can you slap a couple of cheap sensors onto your joints and use your own batting stance in a baseball game? No. Nintendo still hasn't even given us the true swordfighting they promised.
What if the Wii was a bastion for games that don't require graphics?
Getting back to E3, there is one thing that stood out to me among everything else: Atlus. Persona, more specifically. While already old news, the original Persona is being re-released on the PSP and was showcased this week. How is it possible that Nintendo has not thrown millions at this company to get the huge line of import RPG's Atlus has on their side? Low development costs (porting), ease of developing on the Wii, and no need for high-end graphics makes a partnership seem like a common sense move. The Squeenix trend of making their RPG's as shiny as possible is nice, but the JRPG genre never really demanded graphics as much as polish and mechanics. To this day, people will still whip out Xenogears, Chrono Trigger, or an older Final Fantasy title and be quite happy with that. The PS2, of all systems, has received numerous heavyweight RPG titles by Atlus in the past few years. It's still possible that Persona 5 could be a Wii release, but how Nintendo has only Trauma Center to compare to what the PS2 has is almost embarrassing. RPG lovers have always griped about which console will be the RPG hub, and for Nintendo to allow E3 to pass and not convert this group onto their side, with the clock ticking, is shameful.
I own a Wii, and I was happy when I bought it. That has since changed. Nothing at E3 made me excited for Nintendo's future, and it's truly a sad thing. Nintendo has had numerous opportunities to really shake up gaming as a whole. The potential was there to bend genres or create something entirely new, or even just become a guilty pleasure hub for those of us who wanted an alternative to shiny games with no real substance. Two E3's have gone by, and we've bought into their method in the past, so long as we get a new Mario, Zelda, or Metroid to go home and drool over. This time, I think that they've finally choked on their own ego. For this E3 to go by and for them to not play to their strengths and have the audacity to expect us to go home happy just because they showed us Mario Galaxy 2 and the Other M. Last year was a joke, but this was the year that they trotted themselves out on stage and tried to make us forget that they didn't have a plan to change things.
This is bad news for gaming, period. Nintendo won, at first, promising a shake up in gaming that would benefit the entire industry. Now that they have no intention of doing anything with that position, we're left with games like Halo and GTA that just rest on a rince and repeat mechanic. I'm not bashing these games, but Nintendo's failures means that games like these win again. We deserve something more than this, and now we'll have to wait even longer.
So...since this is a review...Metroid, Mario, Zelda were promised, but even so, Nintendo gets the big F at this year's E3.
While I wish I could continue this article with some semblance of polish, I don't think I can stop now that I've let out what I believe to be the cause of this "meh" feeling in the gaming world. If you're not getting that feeling, then let's review some of the facts before we shift our attention to the Big N.
For starters, as if to just shine a light on the entire industry, Left 4 Dead 2 was one of the top announcements at E3. I am a huge Left 4 Dead fan, and I can only think of a few criticisms to stamp onto it. Valve, listening to the fans, decided that they would correct this...by making a sequel. While the sequel tag might sound like good news at first, this denotes a new game, which means that instead of updating Source and instead of just being good little developers and creating a $10 DLC package that the existing horde would eat up immediately, we're left with the same near-decade old engine and will need foot the bill for Left 4 Dead to go makeup shopping. Hardly industry rattling news.
The PSP Go was also announced, and I'm just not seeing the allure of that either. Not only is the first true update to the PSP several years late, but it offers up nothing of note. True, you don't need UMD's anymore, but the entire point of the PSP was to offer up the portable alternative to the PS2, and that only works if you release PS2 games on it. Sure, an A+ title appears every so often, but that's like saying that the Washington Nationals are a worthwhile team because they win a game per week.
Microsoft seems to be the only one pressing their influence, with every major gaming conference showing off their ability to steal a prime Sony-exclusive and turn it into a selling point. This doesn't bother me, but going through each of these events without announcing a new hardware revision that promises to survive longer than three months doesn't make me want to buy their console any more.
Microsoft and Sony took their combined shot at the leader by officially announcing they would be ripping off the Wii with motion control options. Translation: Nintendo's time to make the Wii relevant ends when E3 ends.
It's been three years, and the Wii has had its chance, and has completely failed at everything it has gone out to accomplish. Supposedly, this system should be easy to develop for, but I don't think even Nintendo knows who bought a development kit. A GameStop wall lined with Cooking Mama, Hannah Montana, and every crappy Sonic release is not what gamers had in mind. Capcom seems to be the only company out there willing to put any stake in this console, and while the first party titles are very good, they were all games that could have been released on the GameCube. The announcement of Team Ninja taking on Metroid was amazing news, but it only proves that the N is not really committed to create new IP's.
Also, the Other M announcement bothered me in another way. It has took Nintendo three years to figure out that this was a type of game people wanted. The stigma of games needing to be mature is a completely misunderstood concept in gaming. No More Heroes and MadWorld were two titles that bothered me more than anything for the sole reason that they claimed to be "mature". Blood does not make a game mature. Harsh language doesn't do it either. Making a really visceral game half-heartedly does not mean that the so-called "hardcore gamers" are going to suddenly want Wiis.
Metroid's new offering instead shows that Nintendo is falling behind at a fast pace. Between that and Zelda, the Other M should have been made already in some way. Action, intensity, and a desire to be bold instead of safe are things that you can see in the new trailer, but what the Team Ninja team up means is that Nintendo is afraid to do it on their own. In 2010, it will have been four years since the Wii was released, and if the Other M is successful, how long will it take for anyone to follow up that sort of game on the console? Too long.
Nintendo has had several opportunities to be "other" system. It could have been the one to stand alongside your XBox and Playstation, but this year's E3 has proven that this is never going to happen. By now, we should have already had our promised 1:1 motion controls. Three years, and nothing has happened. Nintendo hasn't even perfected what it invented in the mainstream sense, and Microsoft and Sony now have a chance to overtake them and kill that advantage. Microsoft scored rights to Final Fantasy XIII last year, jumped into the Resident Evil series this year, and Nintendo's best response is Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles.
What is most bothersome, however, is how this has affected gaming. The Wii was, ideally, supposed to be a massive success for you: the gamer. When the system came out, the initial response was overwhelmingly positive, but the real possibilities didn't really get a lot of light until about two years into the life-cycle.
What if the Wii became the first console to embrace and define "arthouse" gaming?
I have to give credit to Yahtzee on this one, because even though I've been talking about this for years, he generally drove the point home in a couple of one liners. Killer 7, No More Heroes, and even the new A Boy and His Blob game have a great deal of creative promise to them. While Microsoft and Sony tossed away millions with their first-parties to create another Halo, Gear of War, and Killzone, Nintendo could turn a minor investment into something special without the constraint of development costs. Their system was tailor-built to make everything that didn't require photo-realism to run smooth, fast, and beautifully. The Wii was supposed to get our minds off of graphics for a generation and have us experience something truly different that had never been attempted. We got MadWorld.
What if the Wii followed through with their 1:1 immersion?
Can you slap a couple of cheap sensors onto your joints and use your own batting stance in a baseball game? No. Nintendo still hasn't even given us the true swordfighting they promised.
What if the Wii was a bastion for games that don't require graphics?
Getting back to E3, there is one thing that stood out to me among everything else: Atlus. Persona, more specifically. While already old news, the original Persona is being re-released on the PSP and was showcased this week. How is it possible that Nintendo has not thrown millions at this company to get the huge line of import RPG's Atlus has on their side? Low development costs (porting), ease of developing on the Wii, and no need for high-end graphics makes a partnership seem like a common sense move. The Squeenix trend of making their RPG's as shiny as possible is nice, but the JRPG genre never really demanded graphics as much as polish and mechanics. To this day, people will still whip out Xenogears, Chrono Trigger, or an older Final Fantasy title and be quite happy with that. The PS2, of all systems, has received numerous heavyweight RPG titles by Atlus in the past few years. It's still possible that Persona 5 could be a Wii release, but how Nintendo has only Trauma Center to compare to what the PS2 has is almost embarrassing. RPG lovers have always griped about which console will be the RPG hub, and for Nintendo to allow E3 to pass and not convert this group onto their side, with the clock ticking, is shameful.
I own a Wii, and I was happy when I bought it. That has since changed. Nothing at E3 made me excited for Nintendo's future, and it's truly a sad thing. Nintendo has had numerous opportunities to really shake up gaming as a whole. The potential was there to bend genres or create something entirely new, or even just become a guilty pleasure hub for those of us who wanted an alternative to shiny games with no real substance. Two E3's have gone by, and we've bought into their method in the past, so long as we get a new Mario, Zelda, or Metroid to go home and drool over. This time, I think that they've finally choked on their own ego. For this E3 to go by and for them to not play to their strengths and have the audacity to expect us to go home happy just because they showed us Mario Galaxy 2 and the Other M. Last year was a joke, but this was the year that they trotted themselves out on stage and tried to make us forget that they didn't have a plan to change things.
This is bad news for gaming, period. Nintendo won, at first, promising a shake up in gaming that would benefit the entire industry. Now that they have no intention of doing anything with that position, we're left with games like Halo and GTA that just rest on a rince and repeat mechanic. I'm not bashing these games, but Nintendo's failures means that games like these win again. We deserve something more than this, and now we'll have to wait even longer.
So...since this is a review...Metroid, Mario, Zelda were promised, but even so, Nintendo gets the big F at this year's E3.
