Nintendo Conference Details
Tuesday, July 15th, 2008
Following on the heels of yesterday’s Microsoft conference, it’s time for Nintendo to step up to the plate. In my opinion, Nintendo needs a good show. I considered last year to be a flop with only Wii Fit and Mario Kart as their major announcement. But more importantly, I feel that Microsoft threw down the gauntlet yesterday when they announced their Avatars (Creepily similar to Miis). Either way, I will be covering the event live. I’ll type everything as it happens here, in case you can’t or don’t want to watch. Then I’ll try to post some actual articles about what happens. Though with the Sony event coming up following the Nintendo conference, it may be a bit later.
12:00pm – Here we go. Getting started…
12:08 – The show is live now.
12:10 – Shaun White Snowboarding announced using Wii balance board. Saw that coming. Looks pretty intuitive and easy. An improvement on using the board purely for aerobics.It’s exclusive to Wii. Duh?
12:15 – Nintendo president is on stage now.
12:18 – The makers of Mario and Zelda are hard at work on new games (I take that to mean they won’t be announcing anything then). However, the new titles like Wii Sports and Wii Fit are also important, and have been well supported by consumers. Sales stats, sales stats, sales stats. Microsoft kept it to like 5 minutes. Why can’t everyone else? Hearing it in Japanese heavy English makes it even hard to take.
12:22 – Zzzzzzzz
12:23 – Creator of Animal Crossing on a video now to announce "Animal Crossing: City Folk". World goes on without you. Adds a city-scape. You can choose to "Put on a mask to look like your Mii" rather than that creepy looking little boy. New accessory called "Wii Speak". Allows everyone in your room to talk to a room full of other players. That sounds like a "bad idea". They didn’t want to make a head set. Ultimately, it looks like the DS version. Guess that’s cool if you dig that game.
12:28 – Reggie announces the game will release "by the end of the year" with the Wii speak microphone. Oh for crying out loud. More freaking sales numbers. I get it. Wii and DS sells. Announce some stuff.
12:33 – Thought he said he was going to keep this short.
12:36 – Thank God. He shut up finally. Now showing Star Wars Clone Wars with light saber duels. Easily the coolest thing shown so far. Holiday 2008.
12:37 – Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party – Looks like another big mini-game game. Which is cool. Rayman is very fun.
12:38 – Call of Duty World at War. Looks meh, like most realistic games on the Wii.
12:40 – More stats. Girls like DS. Guitar Hero On Tour Decades is on the way. As is Spore Creatures. Also known as the gimped version.
12:43 – Pokemon Rangers: Shadows of something or another. DS Game. Plus Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars. Set in Liberty City. That’s pretty big, for a hand held.
12:44 – Using the DS for Airport stuff, resteraunt locators, etc. Ok? Oh, and a cookbook.
12:47 – Reggie comes on stage to talk about the Wii Motion Plus. Something that was announced yesterday or the day before. It’s a clip-on for the Wii-mote that makes it more accurate. Thank God.
12:48 – Wii Sports Resort "is literally a day at the beach".The first game on the title…discus with your dog. The motion plus seems to improve your control a lot. The game looks a bit cheesy. Also, the game will come with a motion plus and a Wii mot jacket.
12:50 – A Jet Ski game in Wii Sports. That looks pretty cool. Should be a full Wave Race game.
12:52 – 1 to 1 (What you do, your Mii does) sword dueling. Cool.
12:54 – Wii Sports launches next spring. Did it seriously take that long to realise such a cool idea needed a sequel?
12:56 – Some free range drumming being shown using the wiimote/nunchuck as drum sticks. And the Balance Board as a bass pedal. Now, Miyamoto is play the Saxaphone with the wiimote. It’s for Wii Music. Sounded pretty good. How will it sound for regular people. And ultimately, what’s the point? Apparently, there is no skill involved. The Wii plays the notes based on the song you are playing.
1:01 – Violin, Sax, Drums, Guitar, Piano, A variety of percussion instruments.The drums feature a lesson to teach you to play the drums "in just a few weeks". Orchestra game is included in Wii Music.
1:05 – Got a group of people making a band to play the Mario song live. Very weird. Kind of cool, but games that play themselves don’t usually end up being much fun.
1:08 – Are they seriously wrapping things up now? I hope to God they have a cool announcement to wrap things up with.
1:10 – ….nope. God, what a horrible conference. That’s worse than the Sony E3 2006 conference.
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“More stats. Girls like DS.”
^^WOW, really Nintendo? I would’ve thought they got in the way of our gloves and petticoats. *rolls eyes* Women make up 35% of the gaming industry. We play the same games as the boys. Gaming world? Please stop making patronizing attempts at “cracking the girl market” with “pink” things and “girl versions” of Guitar Hero. We like the same games the boys do, accept it.
God, they’re almost as bad as the comic book industry.
(Sorry, big pet peeve)
I was monitoring the Wii message boards on IGN to see their reaction. They were a lot more harsh with their reactions than I was. They freaking hated that conference. It was so painful to watch. Here’s hoping Sony stands toe-to-toe with Microsoft during their conference.
Oh boy….
As a huge Nintendo fanboy, even I have to admit that that conference was pretty pathetic. Whoever decided to let that crazy woman on the stage should be shot. She was horrible, and her smiling all the time was very creepy.
No big new announcements. Mostly just bragging about how great they are.
The Good Stuff: Animal Crossing, Wii Sports Resort, and Wii Music will all probably be very fun. I’m sure I’ll end up buying them all eventually.
The Rest: Yuck. No Pikmin 3 or any other new game in a “hardcore” franchise.
So overall, pretty bad conference. Right up there with Sony’s in 2006 as worst ever. But as bad as the presentation was, I’m still not very worried about my Wii. Games are coming that I will enjoy. They didn’t even talk about the new Wario Land coming out in a few months, which I can’t wait for. Well, I here’s hoping for better stuff later this year for Wii.
Thanks Randy,
I think that Nintendo did just fine. They’re selling like hotcakes, so really keeping status quo is all they really need. I have to say that all the “kid-friendly” crap is getting on my nerves. Get a real headset!! The only next gen system that doesn’t have Bluetooth is the only one to have a headset in the box.
@Palaemon: This is why I’m glad Microsoft is now in second place. I hate that idea that if you are in first place, you can just coast along. Ask Sony how well that worked for their PS3 launch.
I agree. Wii speak looked horrible. WTF? Why would you want it to pick up your whole living room? The sound quality will be horrible.
Well, at least it was better than last years presentation (No YouTube clips this time!!!), and it was fairly short.
There was actually quite a bit of stuff in here, but most of the interesting stuff didn’t get a lot of time. The DS will be getting another GuitarHero game, but even more interesting is that the DS is getting a Grand Theft Auto game. I want to know what is up with that!
The WiiSpeak thing is good, if only because it will pave the way for an actual headset, whether from Nintendo or a third party. The new Animal Crossing game looks like more of the same stuff from the earlier games, so if you liked them, you’ll probably like this one.
The Wii Motion Plus peripheral has some potential. I really liked the tease they showed for the new WiiSports. It will depend on what else there is in there though. However, the sword dueling stuff definitely looks fun.
WiiMusic looks dumb, but it should easily sell to the casual crowd.
This is pretty much what I expected out of Nintendo again. They are using the conference to focus on the more casual stuff, and the more hardcore stuff will be shown later on to the media in small settings. I thought that Nintendo’s presentation quality was a bit better than Microsoft’s, but MS had better announcements.
@Polygon: I hate to be disagreeing with you so much lately, but….I disagree. :)
Last year’s Nintendo conference may have been lame as well. But I actually preferred the big Wii Fit and especially Mario Kart announcements to this years Animal Crossing, Wii Music, and Wii Sports Resort. It’s a thin line, but still. I can see where you are coming from with the DS announcements. But honestly, I don’t watch a conference for handheld announcements. I don’t take them nearly as serious. They could have announced that Zelda and Mario were teaming up for a DS game, and I still wouldn’t have considered it to be a huge announcement.
Wii Motion was the coolest thing at the conference for me, by far. But it wasn’t announced there. They announced it a couple days back. And they have VERY LITTLE that actually took advantage of it. The Wii Sports stuff is a start, but at the very least, that Star Wars Clone Wars game should have taken advantage of it.
Wii Music seems like another one of those games that will appeal to the casual gamer…then go straight to their Living room shelf never to be played again. I find it hard to believe that anyone wants to constantly play a game that has no game. But maybe I’m a bit too “Hard Core” to understand that concept.
The problem is, conferences are not casual. They are Hard Core. Announce casual stuff VIA Media Briefings and press releases. Announce Hard Core things at events like this. Even a majority of the main stream market journalists were saying Nintendo blew this event. Again, if that’s what it means when you are in first place, I’m glad I don’t follow a system that is there. This just keeps going to show how the Wii is not for me. Now if I could find someone to off-load mine onto…
And I think it goes without saying, but I completely disagree with you on the presentation. Having a woman come on stage and talk about how she sprained her wrist in a snowboarding incident is HORRIBLE presentation. And Boring. Having no less than 20 minutes of stats talk is short-sighted. The one drawback the Microsoft conference had from it’s “decent” presentation, was the painful to watch concert/You’re in the movies presentation. But when you talk about showing off Fable 2, Resisdent Evil 5, Gears of War 2, Final Fantasy XIII, etc… I just can’t see how tossing a frisbee to your pet dog can be on the same level at all.
Overall Show Content: Microsoft > Sony > Nintendo
Overall Show Presentation: Sony > Microsoft > Nintendo
When I talk about the “presentation”, I’m not talking about actual content or the particular thing being shown. I’m actually talking about how the stage is set up, enthusiasm of the presenters, etc. I just liked the sethetics of the Nintendo stage better than MS’s or Sony’s. That’s not to say that the other setups were poor, I just preferred Nintendo’s stage layout.
I definitely agree with you about last year’s Nintendo conference. News-wise, there was a lot more stuff there, but the presentation was a lot longer than this year’s, there were a lot more stats, and they had more than one video segment that featured literal YouTube videos. That really turned me off last year, so any presentation that doesn’t have YouTube in it automatically gets a few points from me.
I’ll have to disagree with you on the snowboarding thing. I think it injects a bit of personality, and it makes things a bit less boring.
So, I think we we disagree on some things, but perhaps not as much as you thought we did.
Overall Show Content: Microsoft > Nintendo > Sony
Overall Show Presentation: Nintendo > Microsoft > Sony
I thought Nintendo still had quite a bit of content, just not much to get excited about. And not a whole lot that we hadn’t already seen or guessed about beforehand. Comparatively, Sony didn’t really reveal a whole lot of stuff in their conference content-wise.
I’m really looking forward to talking about all this stuff on the show later tonight. I think this will be the best show yet. :D