Topic: E3 2012 Press Conferences - Days 2-3: Nintendo Main PC & 3DS PC

[shingi_70]

Eh I'm honestly thinking smartglass will get more support than wii u for non exclusive titles.

Also was I the only one who found Wii Fit U. Erg lackluster after seeing the Nike+ stuff the day before. I mean mu mom will probably go with wii u fit instead due to the more friendly UI, but a lot of my friends would rather get the thing that already conncets to the service e they are already using.

And No why haven't anyone decided to fuse Rockband/Sing/ and dance central and get it over with.

[nickmitch]

Rockband and Guitar Hero are dormant at the moment. It makes more sense to just release the software as it is and try to integrate it later, if possible.

[oohhboy]

Fusing all the music games is an impossible task. Licensing will kill any possibility.

Smart glass won't get more support since 1,it isn't built in. 2, requires outside hardware no one controls, therefore extremely unpredictable. 3, it is inherently less capable than the Gamepad.

Smart glass might be more "portable", but portability isn't a concern for the functions that the Gamepad is meant to do. Smart glass is mostly FUD inorder to blunt Nintendo's advantage.

[shingi_70]

Fusing all the music games is an impossible task. Licensing will kill any possibility.

Smart glass won't get more support since 1,it isn't built in. 2, requires outside hardware no one controls, therefore extremely unpredictable. 3, it is inherently less capable than the Gamepad.

Smart glass might be more "portable", but portability isn't a concern for the functions that the Gamepad is meant to do. Smart glass is mostly FUD inorder to blunt Nintendo's advantage.

I'd argue if the gamepad is more capable than a tablet.

That and I think tut while they aren't going after the same thing you are highly underestimating Microsoft's ability to go to a pub or dev pull out. Blank check and say put kinect and Smartglass into your game and we will cover the marketing budget and some of the dev costs.

I mean they already had a proof of concept of Madden and Wii U couldn't even get that.


Also watchdogs showed off an Ipad app that works with the game as you play and Microsoft will make sure there is a windows 8/smart glass version.


I hope I'm wrong though.

And by music game I meant like say instead of just singing dance did both in one game you have a few players damicing and other players singing.

[oohhboy]

They are asking people to buy a games console and an iPad/equivalent. A $400 dollar controller for a $300(!) to $500 console. That is a very, very, tough sell. You will have developers under supporting it, giving you less reason to ever use it and since it is a second piece of software, that takes resources out of the main game's budget.

The stuff Madden does is old school, low end of what the Gamepad does. Stuff like that was done back with GBAs on a Gamecube Final Fantasy and Tingle tuner. ZombiU shows what you can't do with an iPad.

It's a classic MS where they know they can't match it, so they break out the FUD. Create some tech that's cool and with working prototypes, but crazy expensive with no prospect of ever going mainstream. Same **** with MS surface. Why make a better product when you can pretend to at a fraction of the costs.

[Soren]

Good news everyone! No need to buy a WiiU console if you have a Saturn!

[tendoboy1984]

Good news everyone! No need to buy a WiiU console if you have a Saturn!

Oh ha ha ha! That's rich! Where is this from?

[Evan_B]

Oh man! That 3DS conference!

Did nothing for me except show more Paper Mario, which is the only thing I'm looking forward to.

[oohhboy]

Looks like a Gamestop inventory system.

The software showcase was a waste of time. Nothing new. A close look at Paper Mario had me sold.

[broodwars]

Well, the 3DS press conference is over now, and it was...underwhelming.  I won't say it was "bad", because it was (aside from the insufferable amount of developer chat before a few of the videos) fairly well-paced and Nintendo did show games that our audience in general probably cares about.  But there were no surprises, and this conference managed to make New Super Mario Bros: Golden Showers look even more dull and uninspired than it did yesterday.  Why, exactly, was this press conference needed? Every game shown here was shown either in video or demo form at yesterday's press conference.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate looks good, though that demo ended in a really strange manner.  Luigi's Mansion 2 looks...like a Luigi's Mansion game.  I would have liked to see more new mechanics.  Epic Mickey 2: Power of Illusion looks incredibly average, like a game that wouldn't be out of place in the lineup of GBA shovelware.  Sticker Paper Mario: The Stickering looks ok, though the whole concept of gathering these stickers so you can constantly use them would bug my OCD personality.  I really wish Nintendo would revive the Super Mario RPG brand, though.  I'm kind of done with the whole "Paper Mario" idea.

I'm really surprised at how strangely anemic the 3DS's lineup looks right now.  The Vita right now is incredibly weak and it's going to come out of this E3 looking even weaker, yet Nintendo did not take the opportunity to deliver the Final Blow with a better lineup of games.  Instead, the Vita will limp along to potentially make a recovery at TGS.  I guess Nintendo rushed too many projects to help the 3DS recover last year, so they're a bit barren this year.

[Adrock]

Why, exactly, was this press conference needed?

It wasn't, but it was appreciated. Nintendo didn't have to do that but we got a more in depth look at a bunch of upcoming games. How are you complaining about this? It was free and you weren't forced to watch it. I cannot for the life of me fathom how anyone could possibly see this as a bad thing.

I liked what I saw. I'm getting Mirror of Fate and Paper Mario. I only completed the 1st one.

[broodwars]

Why, exactly, was this press conference needed?

It wasn't, but it was appreciated. Nintendo didn't have to do that but we got a more in depth look at a bunch of upcoming games. How are you complaining about this? It was free and you weren't forced to watch it. I cannot for the life of me fathom how anyone could possibly see this as a bad thing.

I'm not complaining about the conference's existence.  As I thought I made it clear, their decision to have a press conference just perplexed me given how light on new content that conference was.

[Shaymin]

I just have to say that tonight's conference may have set a record for the shortest sizzle reel in E3 history. FOUR GAMES?

[oohhboy]

There wasn't a single bone for people to gnaw on for the next couple of months. It's times like this where you slip a little something for people to speculate over, something to make it worth while. This was like watching the news, but you already seen it and this is the late night edition. If they hinted a new game from an XYZ internal studio, but released no other info, people would be on that for months on end.

[Adrock]

I'm not complaining about the conference's existence.  As I thought I made it clear, their decision to have a press conference just perplexed me given how light on new content that conference was.

I find the fact that you're complaining about it at all to be perplexing. Scott Moffitt glossed over a few games during yesterday's conference and said they would go more in depth tonight which is what they did. I can see being disappointed in yesterday's press conference, but Nintendo told everyone exactly what they were doing for this 3DS software showcase. Manage your expectations.

[shingi_70]

All this did was reinforce that E3 isn't that important and need to focus on more than videogames.

I'm also expecting that the 720 and 0#4 are going to be announced before E3 next year.

[tendoboy1984]

Epic Mickey 2: Power of Illusion looks incredibly average, like a game that wouldn't be out of place in the lineup of GBA shovelware.

I'm guessing you never played Mickey Mania (SNES) or Mickey's Castle of Illusion (Sega Genesis). This new game is directly inspired by those, with the same sprite-based graphics and sound effects.

[broodwars]

Epic Mickey 2: Power of Illusion looks incredibly average, like a game that wouldn't be out of place in the lineup of GBA shovelware.

I'm guessing you never played Mickey Mania (SNES) or Mickey's Castle of Illusion (Sega Genesis). This new game is directly inspired by those, with the same sprite-based graphics and sound effects.

 Dude, I owned and played Mickey Mania to death on my SNES.  It was one of my favorite SNES titles.  This looks nowhere near as good or polished.  I never did play Castle of Illusion, though.  But it's not just the visuals that were underwhelming.  The gameplay looked like every mediocre Super Mario Bros. knock-off we saw back in the SNES/GBA days.  Of course, the brush/thinner mechanic might be cool and add much-needed life to the game, but the trailer decided we'd rather see Mickey jump on enemies and run under Thwomps.

[Chozo Ghost]

yet Nintendo did not take the opportunity to deliver the Final Blow with a better lineup of games.

I understand that sort of criticism, but to be fair its not like they can pull a better lineup of games out of their ass... games take months if not years to make, so the seeds had to have been sown a long time ago before they could be reaped now. Sure, Nintendo should have made better preparations in the past... I'm just saying they can't change course in a moment's notice. Its like with the Titanic... even thoguh they seen the iceberg before they hit, that huge ass ship takes a long time to turn or stop so the collision with the iceberg was still unavoidable. Now, if the crew of the Titanic had a much earlier warning of the iceberg and more time in which to turn then yeah they could have avoided it.

But that analogy doesn't fully apply because there is never not a time when Nintendo shouldn't be releasing games, and if the studios they do have aren't enough to keep up with the task then they need more studios, plain and simple. This is something they need to have been doing years ago... its too late to do anything about the droughts of today, but they need more studios so this doesn't happen ever again.

[MagicCow64]

Fusing all the music games is an impossible task. Licensing will kill any possibility.

Smart glass won't get more support since 1,it isn't built in. 2, requires outside hardware no one controls, therefore extremely unpredictable. 3, it is inherently less capable than the Gamepad.

Smart glass might be more "portable", but portability isn't a concern for the functions that the Gamepad is meant to do. Smart glass is mostly FUD inorder to blunt Nintendo's advantage.

I'd argue if the gamepad is more capable than a tablet.

That and I think tut while they aren't going after the same thing you are highly underestimating Microsoft's ability to go to a pub or dev pull out. Blank check and say put kinect and Smartglass into your game and we will cover the marketing budget and some of the dev costs.

I mean they already had a proof of concept of Madden and Wii U couldn't even get that.

Yeah, this is what I'm thinking about Smart Glass. When you notice how so many games have completely tacked-on Kinect support, the only explanation is that MicroSoft is twisting arms and greasing wheels. I have to think that the dudes making these games have no respect for the the Kinect, and include the features begrudgingly. It was a quiet story, but I found it notable when Epic confirmed their Gears of War spinoff was dead. Felt like a big dog biting the hand. Or that it was never real. Nintendo can longer compete with Microsoft in that respect, but they could well benefit from easy functionality ports from Microsoft-subsidized Xbox games. Unless Microsoft adds caveats about not porting Smartglass programming or concepts.

In reply to Chozo Ghost's last comment, that's why I've found it puzzling for years why Nintendo divested themselves of their 2nd party stable. Sold off Rare, closed Leftfield, broke off with Silicon Knights, let Factor 5 defect/fail, and did not buy the cow with close developers who would clearly just would do them good (Good Feel, Monster e.g.). They got really fucking lucky to own Retro. If Retro wasn't around even in the imagination, things would be pretty goddamn bleak at this point. And I suspect Dragon Quest support is doing them good overseas.

On the other hand, Factor 5, Silicon Knights, and Rare never made a good game again after leaving (maybe Viva Pinata), so maybe Nintendo knew something we didn't?

[ThePerm]

yet Nintendo did not take the opportunity to deliver the Final Blow with a better lineup of games.

I understand that sort of criticism, but to be fair its not like they can pull a better lineup of games out of their ass... games take months if not years to make, so the seeds had to have been sown a long time ago before they could be reaped now. Sure, Nintendo should have made better preparations in the past... I'm just saying they can't change course in a moment's notice. Its like with the Titanic... even thoguh they seen the iceberg before they hit, that huge ass ship takes a long time to turn or stop so the collision with the iceberg was still unavoidable. Now, if the crew of the Titanic had a much earlier warning of the iceberg and more time in which to turn then yeah they could have avoided it.

But that analogy doesn't fully apply because there is never not a time when Nintendo shouldn't be releasing games, and if the studios they do have aren't enough to keep up with the task then they need more studios, plain and simple. This is something they need to have been doing years ago... its too late to do anything about the droughts of today, but they need more studios so this doesn't happen ever again.

as you said there is never a time when Nintendo shouldn't be releasing games. Nintendo should have a solid launch ready by launch, but it doesn't. The Wii U is supposedly more powerful than the ps360, but doesn't seem to have a lineup that could match their launch lineups. I like to think of 2002 as an example of a good year for gaming. If the games that came out in 2002 for Gamecube were coming out against the wii u I would get a gamecube instead. There really is no excuse for these weak launches or software droughts.

[oohhboy]

You clearly over-estimate what Smart Glass is really capable of doing. It's FUD. It's being sent out to die because it doesn't really work at the end of the day. There is no way in hell you can expect people to pay $400 for an iPad equivalent for a $300 ~ $500 console, for nothing more than the most basic function which another console can do far better for around $50~$100 for a second controller and has one ready out of the box.

No amount of money thrown to developers is going to make people buy in. The wheels are not there for MS to grease without MS subsiding iPhone, iPods and smart phones.

[shingi_70]

You clearly over-estimate what Smart Glass is really capable of doing. It's FUD. It's being sent out to die because it doesn't really work at the end of the day. There is no way in hell you can expect people to pay $400 for an iPad equivalent for a $300 ~ $500 console, for nothing more than the most basic function which another console can do far better for around $50~$100 for a second controller and has one ready out of the box.

No amount of money thrown to developers is going to make people buy in. The wheels are not there for MS to grease without MS subsiding iPhone, iPods and smart phones.

There are more iphones,windows phones, windows Pcs, androids phones and tablets, out there than there are tablets. So where is the disconnect.  You say it as these are some sort niche market and you really think there will be more Wii J's sold this year than windows 8 devices.


And microsoft doesn't need smartglass to be more advanced than the Wii U.

 http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=BS300cA8E6I

Thats what they want and the Wii U Cant compete with that. Plus when getting db's to work on smartglass mi rosoft has to just say put some pinch to zoom on it and boom wii u support is killed.



Also I wouldn't call kinect support takced on. Anyone who has played Mass Effect 3 can tell you the voice controls are very well done.

[Tamazoid]

yet Nintendo did not take the opportunity to deliver the Final Blow with a better lineup of games.

I understand that sort of criticism, but to be fair its not like they can pull a better lineup of games out of their ass... games take months if not years to make, so the seeds had to have been sown a long time ago before they could be reaped now. Sure, Nintendo should have made better preparations in the past... I'm just saying they can't change course in a moment's notice. Its like with the Titanic... even thoguh they seen the iceberg before they hit, that huge ass ship takes a long time to turn or stop so the collision with the iceberg was still unavoidable. Now, if the crew of the Titanic had a much earlier warning of the iceberg and more time in which to turn then yeah they could have avoided it.

But that analogy doesn't fully apply because there is never not a time when Nintendo shouldn't be releasing games, and if the studios they do have aren't enough to keep up with the task then they need more studios, plain and simple. This is something they need to have been doing years ago... its too late to do anything about the droughts of today, but they need more studios so this doesn't happen ever again.

Nintendo seem to be very wary in creating new studios. I think they got burned more than we thought by the Retro walk out in 2008. They seem to prefer teaming up with Western developers instead of buying them. Nintendo are a very traditional company, they don't like building up talent and then losing it. Company loyalty is very important for them.  As Iwata has said before if you buy out a third party the talent may not necessarily stay. Then all you are left with is a shell of a company.


Nintendo are staffing up though. I believe they hired an extra 300 people for one of their Japanese studios not long ago and they created a new Monolith team. This E3 has shown that Nintendo has not learned from the 64/Gamecube/Wii. Obviously they were expecting to have a bigger third party display and their handful of Nintendo titles for the faithful. Nintendo obviously thought that the third party they gathered was enough for launch. It is enough third party games for launch, if WiiU was not up against 2 other competitors with similar hardware power. There are 4 third party exclusives for the WiiU (Rayman Legends, ZombiU, Tank! Tank! Tank!, and Ninja Gaiden: slightly better edition) I'm actually surprised that were able to get more than 1 (Granted Tank! is a 5 year old arcade port and calling Ninja Gaiden 3 Razor an exclusive is dubious, not counting Batman because Ninja Gaiden actually looks like the definite version)


Nintendo should have realised that they had two choices this gen, go for broke with strong hardware or do a half step. They of course chose the latter. However they should have expected that third parties were going to be waiting in the wings before porting all their crap. What third party would really start pushing all their games onto a system with 0 install base? Smart ones it seems. Ubisoft had massive success at the Wii launch, Redsteel sold 1 million for gods sake. Since Nintendo decided against all out power they had to show first and second party games, they needed to support their own system.


They announced 5/6(Depends if you count Ninja Gaiden a Nintendo game since it's published by them. Same with P-100) games for the WiiU. Not bad I guess for launch, depends how long their 'launch window' lasts, Reggie said something about it being an extra long launch window or some crap. Nintendo's main problem among most fans and press is that they showed nothing of their games that will appear past launch. People expect E3 to be the Mecca of games, a plethora of game announcements, Nintendo seems to have decided to hype their launch, not the console itself. There are rumours that support this theory, someone on gaf reckons that Retro had a demo that could have been shown (Take this with a grain of salt). Common sense dictates that other Nintendo studios would have been able to show off something, a teaser trailer/ CGI trailer/ concept art to get people excited. Nintendo must have games in development ready for mid-late 2013.


3DS is a different case. Seems to indicate that Nintendo are finished with announcing titles that are more than 6 months away. Look at the handling of Animal Crossing/Fire Emblem. Both are coming to the West with both released/nearly released in Japan. Yet they were no shows at E3. If this is what Nintendo's policy is now it's foolhardy. They are basically stopping people getting hyped about future software thus disillusioning fans. Though I suppose it could be a positive in some cases. Last Guardian was announced 6? years ago. Sony has been burned by that. And no one will ever forgot DNF. .  . . .


Overall I think the Nintendo doom and gloom has been overblown(I myself was very upset after the conference, the hype is growing again though). E3 is not the conference it once was, Hell Nintendo Direct is more interesting. (That Nintendo Direct before the conference was better than the actual conference itself imo) The WiiU launch is shaping up as being more interesting than the Wii Launch (I hated TP so that's probably why). Most people would be fine if Nintendo did what they did in 2006 and showed games like Galaxy and Metroid Prime 3 that didn't release for another year. Nintendo for some reason decided against it.

[Hey Einstein!]

Re Smart Glass.


For once I think Michael Patcher is making the most sense on this, did you hear him on Giant Bomcast this week? He reckons Smart Glass is not aimed at gamers as such but more about getting the right things in place to control all the various entertainment content that Microsoft want coming through the xbox instead of cable/satelite/phone etc etc. They are pulling an Xbox Live and getting the new service up and running this gen so it's ready for the main event - the next gen multimedia hub thing that the new xbox will no doubt be.


Makes sense to me. MS certainly aren't that interested in xbox as a gaming platform anymore, as evidenced by the focus on everything but gaming. Well, maybe just a little bit of gaming ;-)