Yeah, I agree with the idea that the Direct itself was executed poorly overall. I think it started out really strong, and they actually have a lot of near-term games that they could make a big deal of in 2015, but they just failed to create a single compelling narrative (marketing story?) that could unite the whole experience and give people something to focus on afterwards.

I felt going in that this was going to be a down year for Nintendo, and it was!


The frustrating thing is that it didn't have to be. Even if we limit ourselves to games only coming out in 2015 and early 2016, I felt there are interesting titles for Nintendo to push. Also, some neat curve balls like Fatal Frame 5 and Devil's Third. Instead, we had more time spent on stuff such as Yoshi's Woolly World and Super Mario Marker; games that are known quantities and already have good showings.


It would've been a tough job to follow Sony's act, but I felt that Nintendo didn't even try.


I will echo Alex's sentiment that we have Wii U and 3DS games to look forward this year. It's just a shame that they weren't well presented.

Sure they did: "transformations." Whatever that means...

There are plenty of games they could have shown or at least held off from showing before hand, but they chose not to instead focusing on a smaller amount of games and spending waaaaaaaay too long on them. The pacing was absolute garbage and made their sparse line up look even worse.

After Sony and Microsoft's great presentations, Nintendo really misstepped here. So many of the games shown today we had already seen, we got so few solid release dates and windows, but the biggest punch to the gut was the animal crossing board game.

Nick: "Just putting out another 3DS Animal Crossing on Wii U is not going to be good either. So what do they do?"


I'll gladly take a 3DS Animal Crossing clone on Wii U instead of another party game in a system that already has Nintendo Land, Game and Wario, Wii Party U and Mario Party 10.

I'd gladly take neither of those and have that dev team do something less derivative.

Their squad just made Splatoon. Why can't they do something else now?

Splatoon released like, 3 weeks ago.

I didn't know it was that team. But if they've got the chops to make Splatoon they shouldn't be stuck making Animal Crossing Party.

They also made Nintendo Land. I don't need these guys to make another party game. You went outside the box for Wii U and that's good, just give me comfort food and I'll be happy.

I agree. They should make another, superior Animal Crossing, AKA Nintendo's comfiest internal franchise.

I feel like Animal Crossing is so much better suited to handhelds, so unless they come up with something they think would only work in a console setting they probably shouldn't be in a hurry to put one there.

But why is it better suited for handhelds? That argument continues to be thrown around without anyone really explaining why it is.

The play of Animal Crossing is (eventually) tuned to spending 20-30 minutes once a day, every day on a daily and weekly routine. The expectation of home console games is of long sessions. Granted, Animal Crossing has been on home consoles before and the Wii U GamePad is sorta portable.

no pokemon games.... :'(