E3 2012: Nintendo Conference Recap and Debate

It’s become a yearly tradition and its time for another round. Join Mark Serrels, Editor of Kotaku Australia and myself as we go over everything that was the Nintendo E3 Conference.

Did Nintendo wrong and right this year? Are we sold on the Wii U? Is Reggie indeed a zombie? Some of these questions might get answered, you’ll just have to read through and find out.

Serrels: So Mr Vooks, time for our annual E3 Nintendo chat. We always discuss Nintendo’s E3 conference, and sometimes we even agree. Just a second ago you mentioned to me, over email, that you had finally figured out how you felt about the conference — what did you mean by that? And how do you feel about the conference?!

Vook: Well my immediate reaction post conference was ‘Well that was that’. I was feeling just a tiny bit angry with what was shown. Well more to the more, what wasn’t shown. But now sleeping on it, I’m not angry — there’s no reason to be and there are some great things to take away from the conference, but I’m more disappointed. Nintendo did the absolute bare minimum yesterday and gave people more reason not to buy the console. I’m still going to buy one, but they did no favours in winning anyone over, that’s what disappointed me.

Serrels: At the start of the conference it felt to me as though this was really a chance for Nintendo to blow people out of the park – to just show a barrage of games. Quality games, franchise games, maybe even new IPs. It should also have been a chance to truly show that Wii U had 3rd party support.

I saw very little of that. ZombieU is great, but Ubisoft has always been massive supporters of new tech. That’s nothing new. Time spent discussing a game – Batman: Arkham City – that’s not ideal. A trailer made up of poor, not that interesting third party games that will be available on other consoles and will most likely look and play exactly the same? Man, at that point I started to worry a little.

Vook: They started off like they were going to do that, they got straight into Pikmin 3 (which looks really nice), then Reggie came out and said they only have an hour so it will be all about the games. The next 10 minutes at least were then retreading what learnt with the Nintendo Direct event. Then as you say, the old games got rolled out. Sigh. 

The problem with Batman, Darksiders II, Aliens: Colonial Marines, Mass Effect 3 is that by the time the Wii U comes out at least one of those games will be over 12 months old, not that they’re bad or boring games.

Now ports and rereleases happen all the time, but to fill a new console that’s going win the hearts of core gamers with games they’ve already played? It’s a bit worrying, even I’ve finished Batman: Arkham City and I don’t finish anything. Oh and are Nintendo fans really going to buy Mass Effect 3? No. 

It wasn’t all ports though as you say, ZombiU sounds like a great idea and should have been showed off more, let’s hope it does go ‘Red Steel’ on us though.

The worst thing though, about the conference was the lack of things to look forward to after launch. At E3 2010 when they showed off the 3DS for the first time they showed off games like Paper Mario and Animal Crossing for the 3DS that aren’t even out yet. So far, of the Wii U, all we’ve seen is a handful of new titles (Pikmin, Nintendo Land, Scribblenauts) and the ports. There’s no 2013, 2013 games yet to get excited about.

Serrels: The thing that really surprised me was the fact that Nintendo finished with NintendoLand – a concept I barely understood during the conference (probably because I was too busy liveblogging). Is that something that was supposed to define the Wii U? To convince us of its worthiness? It started off as a diversion to me. I thought, this is the filler before some big reveal.

Turned out that was the big reveal. Such a bad way to end the conference…

Vook: The thing was, once they wheeled out the game it took all of 5 seconds to figure out what it was (after I stopped live blogging too). Nintendo properties, in genres they’re usually not in, inside of mini-games. It’s the Wii Sports of the Wii U. I mean that in the sense that its the game everyone will play or buy with their Wii U, get to grips with it any buy something else. Nintendo just felt they had to spend 20 minutes on it. It’s a nice idea, it’s interesting to see Nintendo properties in other genres and art styles.

You’re right though Mark, this game won’t define the Wii U. A lot of the other games they showed too don’t really use the Wii U GamePad in interesting ways, we also didn’t see too many compelling arguments for asymmetric gameplay. This morning we’re hearing about more games and more ways that this will come to fruition but last night it was all a little bit underwhelming. The next few months are going to be up and downs hearing about the good and bad parts of the Wii U, last night it was the 3-5 hour battery life, a negative. This morning we learnt you can transfer your WiiWare and Virtual Console games over, that’s a positive.

Nintendo’s going to have to do some serious courting over the next six months to get us to open our wallets.