I feel the conference was a solid B+. The overall pacing was decent and the reveals were nice for me. The 3DS game reel was impressive to me because the 1st party titles all look a lot better than they appeared previously and the movie screen they debuted them on was also impressive.
I like the concept of WiiU and the controller very much. The tech demo reel of the controller demonstrating different applications for it was pretty cool and I can really see other companies besides Nintendo really leveraging great uses for it.
I was happy to see that all the peripherals I purchased for my Wii will pretty much carry over to the new system. And even if only like 2 games will be made to utilize them all, at least I won't have to buy anymore stuff to augment the experience.
I wish they didn't show that tech demo for the graphical prowess of the WiiU. Things like that are only really impressive if you use familiar franchise characters or showcase more graphical tricks than just depth of field. What they should have shown was a shorter version of the Unreal 3.99 demo shown at GDC running on the WiiU hardware. For those who've never seen that tech demo before, look it up on youtube. It is in realtime, uses in-game graphics, and is godly. THAT would have impressed me of the capabilities of the new hardware. As of right now I am still in the dark on what it can truly display, but I am satisfied with the looks of the 3rd party games and that Zelda video.
Now that its all over (for now at least. New announcements are still forthcoming throughout each day of E3), I feel like Nintendo is in a position to really polish, experiment, and innovate on the ideas that they introduced with the Wii on the WiiU. They can let 3rd parties do their thing for the male 13-25 yr old demohraphic and focus on creating new ip, innovate the older ones, and just do Nintendo crazy without the fear that their audience won't be able to get their complete gaming fix from one system.
Other random thoughts:
-The Wii to the WiiU reminds me heavily of the Nes to the Snes era. I hope it reflects the same creative proliferation of quality from all parties like it did during that generation of gaming.
-There is still a lot we don't know about the new system like cost, complete feature set, media, and the ever important online infrastructure. But they need to have something to talk about next E3, so I'm not mad. They showcased the controller which is enough to talk about in and of itself for months to come.
-Was disappointed that no new 1st party ip was announced for any Nintendo system.
-Seriously, Luigi's Mansion 2 was a very awesome surprise and is a day one purchase for me.
-As a matter of fact, every 1st party 3DS game they showed will be a day one purchase for me, I was that impressed.
-Not really disappointed that no Wii games were shown during the press conference. Nintendo has the rest of E3 to announce Xenoblade/Last Story for NA (I hope) and any other games for the Wii's fall schedule (like the Rhythm Heaven sequel that should be for 3DS!)
-I can't stress how much I love gaming freebies (portable Four Swords!?!)
-They are gonna have a similar problem marketing this new console to the mass market as they are having with the 3DS because the systems look so similar and can use (mostly) all the same peripherals, too (which is a plus mind you, but will probably confuse grandma walmart)
-WiiU = Wii II except the I's are connected at the bottom to form a delicious combo of "we" and "you"...or it could just be another crazy console name like saturn, xbox(360), and dreamcast
I'm just glad all the conferences are done. It can't be healthy to sustain these levels of E3 excitement for a grown man of my age
.
Topic: E3 2011 Nintendo Press Conference Thread (Read 61439 times)
