Wow. This was one of Nintendo’s best press conferences ever. Yes, that is despite the fact that no news regarding Pikmin, Star Fox or Mario Party was announced (Sounds like Wii Party took care of the Mario party franchise for a bit…) This is also despite the fact that there was no Wii HD, no new major Wii accessory or much in the way of Wii Motion Plus support. Nintendo’s press conference was good for two reasons-the upcoming games, and the Nintendo 3DS. We’ll hear more about 3DS from trusted news sources who will likely tell us much in the coming days, and probably even the coming hours. Nintendo was smart to demonstrate the 3DS to people individually.
Let’s talk a little bit about the games. From start to finish, there was no shortage of great games that were announced for all the Nintendo consoles. The layout and presentation of their press conference was darn near perfect. They started with The Legend of Zelda, which is a game we all saw coming, and then quickly ventured into other games, like Mario Sports Mix, Wii Party and Golden Sun DS. And what better way to segue from Golden Sun DS than with a trailer for a Goldeneye 007 remake. I actually linked a leaked trailer last night, and the same trailer was shown today. It was obviously very quickly removed. But it looks to be promising.
Then, Nintendo surprised us with a couple revitalizations of older franchises. Retro Studios, the geniuses behind the Metroid Prime series, had moved on to a new project-Donkey Kong Country Returns. It looks pretty good, and could be a great new idea for this Texas-based development company. For the 3DS, there is the new Kid Icarus title. Although we couldn’t see the real 3D aspect of it, the game graphics themselves looked astounding. I am curious to see how other games will look. On that note, I was a little surprised of a few games that were not showcased. Namely, Pokemon Black and White was not shown. Maybe we’ll see it on the show floor. It should be very interesting to see which games do end up on the show floor this week.
It should be said that it was probably impossible to please everybody. While I had hoped for different ‘new’ games like Pikmin 3 or Star Fox or even Mario Party, this did not happen. I would have hoped at least for Nintendo to let us North Americans to finally get Pikmin 2 for the Wii. Ugh…but, Nintendo has not made a complete misstep. The games they did announce, demonstrate and reveal are all very good games. Sure, they are not major IPs like the Halo, Fable or Call of Duty series, but the Wii is doing what it has done well for 3 years; that’s motion-controlled games. With Metroid: Other M on the horizon, the Wii will still maintain itself well for the next year, to be sure. Nintendo’s conference next year will truly have to be the one in which they deliver some goods on a new Nintendo console.
But we’re not there yet. And for now, Nintendo has built itself quite a reign on the market. With 3DS likely to be released within the next 365 days, Nintendo will yet again grab gamers everywhere who like games on the go. The 3DS appears to a fairly big improvement of the DS, unlike the DSi which was likely the answer to the iPhone and its downloadable applications. I expect that Nintendo will continue that tradition of allowing downloadable content with its new 3DS. And I am sure we will be very satisfied with it.
Nintendo’s first year with the DS wasn’t incredible. There wasn’t much in the way of major games from either Nintendo or third-parties. But it really grew from Mario Kart DS and beyond. And now it’s an extremely popular handheld; even moreso in Japan. Now, Nintendo has done such a good job with the 3DS by keeping the touch screen, adding 3D and two sensors to sense movement (likely a response to iPhone, once again), Nintendo has now capitalized completely on this market. The list of games that are coming from third parties is incredible. Kingdom Hearts and Metal Gear Solid, just to name a few, are games that could see great potential on this system. I am very, very excited for Nintendo and its 3DS.
Of course, I have always been more of a console person. While the Wii side of the presentation wasn’t perfect, we do have a new Zelda coming, and there’s no complaints from that. Sure, I had hoped for a few games but I think with the advent of already big games like Zelda and Metroid and the 3DS, Nintendo will be just fine for the next year. Now all that’s left is Sony’s press conference and a little more from Microsoft with it’s Kinect hardware. Still more to come today, but for now, I am confident that Nintendo has done a good job maintaining its strong position that it has established with the Wii. After two years of subpar press conferences, Nintendo has finally given us a lot to look forward to. Thank you, Nintendo!
