So here we are. The final day of E3 has passed. Right now, all us loyal nerds have left of the annual event is to discuss what was, and what could have been. We always want something more than what we receive. It’s why we have E3 every year, and forums online where we can bitch about our God of War, Electronic Arts, or Nintendo woes.
Speaking of Nintendo woes…
NINTENDO TRIES ONE MORE TIME
I feel like I’ve been talking a lot about Nintendo recently, and for good reason. They seem to show up on pretty much every day of the expo trying to show off more products, more features, and more demos. Sounds like they’re overcompensating for something, maybe?
That might be a bit harsh considering that the company has been trying for years to compete in the big leagues with Sony and Microsoft. Gamers can’t be all excited about your new console or your new games if they’re just rehashes of things they already have.
At the very least, Nintendo admits some mistakes they have made in the past couple of years, especially concerning the Nintendo 3DS, which did not have a great game line up at launch, and was too pricey considering.
Reggie Fils-Aime, president and CEO of Nintendo of America, had this to say yesterday at the expo:
“The reduction on 3DS was a lesson for us, right? It reinforced that we have to have great first-party titles at launch. It reinforced for us that we have to have a strong digital offering at launch. And it reinforced for us the importance of making sure that the other entertainment offerings for a device are there at launch.”
I can understand the need to add things like Netflix, and an online social network, considering that Playstation and Xbox have had those features for years, but will Nintendo be able to compete?
Nintendo also took the time yesterday in another conference to discuss some of the third-party offerings for the Wii, including Castlevania: Lords of Shadow -- Mirror of Fate, and Mass Effect. The company also introduced a few new first-party releases for their consoles, including Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion. You can check out the footage below to see if they may be worth the 3DS.
E3 AFTERMATH
The rest of E3′s final day is comprised of some more extended demonstrations of anticipated releases, including the Devil May Cry reboot, ZombiU, and Disney’s Epic Mickey 2. Therefore, I’m going to take this time to look back over what I have experienced during the past week.
I can only look back on the expo this year and think about what opportunities were missed. Valve could have been doing so much more than promoting the new Counterstrike game (yes, I’m going to be on this for a while now), but we all know that they can’t rush them.
Nintendo and Electronic Arts could have structured their press conferences to actually cater to gamers instead of sticking in almost unrelated guest appearances by people most gamers don’t care about. What was the deal with Flo rida opening up EA’s presentation for absolutely no reason? Or the random receiver at the EA Sports presentation, who I don’t even care enough about to look up? At the very least Usher had his own song to dance to in the Microsoft presentation, so he was kind of relevant. If they had actually thought about their audience they wouldn’t be losing so hard to Sony.
I can understand some of the other guest appearances at the show. Snoop Dogg showed up to help promote Tekken Tag Tournament 2 since he has his own level which looks absolutely dumb, but hilarious. I guess that means it’s kind of like Tekken then.
I did get to see some amazing trailers this year, and I know my wallet’s going to be hating me by this time next year, but overall I was a bit underwhelmed by the lack of interesting and original releases. I’m losing faith in the video game industry, which seems to want to put out the same titles over and over.
Luckily, I think the consumers are finally starting to notice.
See you next year.
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