Opinion: When Nintendo does decide to talk NX, they have to step it up

Nintendo’s E3 showing went pretty good, it wasn’t meant to though. Nearly everyone had Nintendo’s showing pre-pegged as a failure.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild however blew everyone away, it turned the conversation around but it also smothered the fact that Nintendo didn’t have much else to show and just how poorly some of it was announced and communicated.

Communication: something Nintendo has struggled with for some time, they have to pick up their game and soon.

It might be some inoxious thing, some slight mistranslation (like 100 Monolith staff working on Zelda, when there isn’t) or it could be as bad as the Wii U has ended up. One of the biggest problems with the Wii U, outside of all delays, the droughts and poor sales – we know was the messaging. This is something Nintendo needs to work on before it even goes on record with the NX.

Debate about the merits of the E3 all you want, the way Sony (and less so Microsoft) show off their goods couldn’t not be any more diametrically apposed right now. Sony showed years of games coming at E3, Nintendo showed one, the rest were half announced before they were demonstrated. Mario Party was mentioned in a press release about amiibo before they were shown, their assets added to the press kit a day later. Only one game, Ever Oasis was teased as a ‘new RPG’ and then shown off – it’s awhile away but that’s alright.

When Nintendo do decide to show off the NX they best be doing a better job of announcing things than they do now. At the moment, Nintendo will hold some conference or investor meeting in Japan. It’ll leak out from the investor meeting that something was announced or Nintendo will put up a little press release stating or Kimishima or Iwata would have done a small interview with a Japanese news source. Then the day later at the investor briefing we’ll learn a little more, a couple days later we’ll get that information from Nintendo Australia, Europe, and America; all separate, all a little different.

Despite having some of the best gaming translators, Nintendo’s message always seems to get lost in translation. When the NX is announced they need to do it once, and properly. Miyamoto has just said at an their Annual General Meeting that they didn’t want to show the NX at E3 because competitors would, could steal their idea. Why not just say this before and be honest?

Nintendo know what they’re doing, but only in their own heads. Whatever the NX ends up being, it can’t take months and months of following up events and interviews for everyone to ‘get’ it. This isn’t to say Nintendo should spill all the beans at once, but there’s no time and people have no patience anymore for crap information.  It’s obvious a Nintendo Direct should be used here, but it has to a Direct for everyone.

The next step, if they haven’t already, is to get third parties on board. They likely have some third parties on board squirreling away on something but any reveal needs show that Nintendo not only have their own heads around the system, but third parties as well. Then Nindies need to be welcomed aboard, they’re just as important as anyone else in the success or failure of the NX.

It’s obvious Nintendo has something they’re proud of, they literally can’t afford to stuff this up.