What I think Nintendo SHOULD have at E3

E3 is only 4 days away folks! We have cleared space out of our busy schedules to sit down for a few hours and allow Nintendo to amaze us. We’ve heard the rumors. We’ve heard some facts. It’s now Ninfest’s turn to drop what we not only think we’ll see, but what we think Nintendo should show us. With the crystal ball now on the table, let’s begin.

Change the name.
The 3DS confused many would-be consumers from the start by naming an entirely new system almost the same as its predecessor. To many it appeared to be merely a minor upgrade and part of the DS line of hardware. Wii U would likely do the same. It’s not an extension of the Wii, nor is it a redesign. Don’t make it appear to be. Sure it will play all the old Wii games and be compatible with all the Wii peripherals, but that is where the similarities should end. Consumers eventually caught on and the 3DS is now the best selling gaming device on the market, but the key here is to avoid another sluggish start. How long will it take to convince the market that the tablet controller is part of a powerful new console?

More new IP’s.
We got many new IP’s from Nintendo for the Wii, but they were all part of the Wii brand. Wii Party, Wii Play, Wii Sports, etc. In a refocused effort to attract core gamers, it’s time to dive into that Scrooge McDuck vault of Wii/DS money and create new characters and worlds. The Mii’s are a wonderful idea that should continue, but new IP’s outside of the Mii universe are also necessary. Make this the console to take some risks in this department.

More info AND release dates on games shown at E3 2011.
This sounds like a given but remember how long Nintendo kept us in the dark with Kid Icarus: Uprising and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword? Not to mention how long they are going to keep us waiting for last years announcement of the Smash Bros. titles. It gets crowds pumped for the future, but I’m not a big fan of revealing games more than 2 years out. I’d like the focus to be on what I’ll be playing before E3 2013. Knowing that I’ll be playing those titles within a year will get me excited enough.

No redesigned 3DS...yet.
As much as I’d like to see it happen, I think from a business standpoint it wouldn’t be a good idea. Allow the Wii U to take center stage at E3 and don’t cannibalize its sales during the holidays. Continue to support the 3DS with strong software and pull out the redesign next year. One piece of new hardware a year is plenty. Once the 3DS is profitable again later this year and many consumers have had a year or two with it, roll that beast out. Many existing 3DS owners will be willing to repurchase to upgrade, resulting in early units being passed down to those that don’t have one yet. This will get systems in more hands quickly and software will sell even better.

A brand new Zelda experience on 3DS.
Getting Ocarina of Time remastered and in 3D was a great experience, but I’m ready for a new portable adventure. I had tremendous fun with Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks and can’t wait to see what new adventures Link can have on the 3DS. Please Nintendo, show us a new Zelda game that we can have in our hands next summer.

Share the stage with third party devs.
Nintendo usually puts the focus on their titles, but if they want to grab the core gamers attention, a large portion should be devoted to third party Wii U titles. If you watch conferences by Sony or Microsoft they have many different developers come on stage to show and talk about their upcoming games. Nintendo always keeps their own staff front and center with the talk centered only on Nintendo titles. This should be the year they share the stage. Of course Nintendo will try to convince us that the Wii U is the new boss in town, but if other developers join in on the fun, more core gamers will listen.

Retro Studios!
They have been quiet for a couple years now and we know they haven’t been working on anything for Wii. Maybe Nintendo has had them locked away since Donkey Kong Country Returns working on the ultimate Wii U launch game! How awesome would that be. Get up there Retro and knock down the doors! You guys always put out quality games with the same signature polish Nintendo’s own games have. We’ve heard rumors of a Star Fox meets Metroid game. If there is any truth to it and Retro is behind it, prepare to be blown away.

An online service that rivals competitors.
Last and probably the farthest from least is the new Nintendo Network we’ve been hearing about. Nintendo have dragged their feet when it comes to online gaming and have finally decided to work with EA to put together an online experience core gamers can really sink their teeth into. I hope it’s true and really I have no reason to doubt it regardless of Nintendo’s history. If you want to hit a home run with this conference Nintendo, go into detail on your new online approach leaving no question unanswered on how this can finally be the arrival of Nintendo in the online space.

There’s a lot more ass kicking and name taking left Reggie. Bring us to the PROMISED land.

You've got a lot there but I will just comment on the name thing. I don't think it's gonna happen. The new Wii U controller picture now has a Wii U logo on it, plus they made a Facebook page for Wii U and of course for many casuals who bought the Wii and are now looking for a new console, having the Wii name helps establish something they are familiar with. Most casuals don't know Wii is made by Nintendo! Having a different name will divide the casuals. Plus the Wii name of course helps people realise they can use their old games and accessories on it too which is both a good thing and a bad thing. The hardcore gamers will likely ignore Nintendo again because of the Wii name but in the long run, the casuals are what made Wii a success. A way for Nintendo to avoid the confusion is to actually advertise the fact it's brand new and not a new version of the Wii. 3DS failed because they just didn't get the message out there. And at the end of the day, it's just a name. It doesn't matter overall, the games are what matter.

Very good points made. It does seem the name is permanent. I just hope they do get the marketing behind it so there is as little confusion as possible. Casual gamers don't keep up on the industry like we do so it's important to really get the word out and not rely on word of mouth.

The 3DS is actually doing really well right now! Maybe not hitting Nintendo's lofty goals but it's outselling everything else out there. It was probably harder to differentiate the 3DS from the DS since it basically looks just like a DS. Maybe there won't be as much confusion with Wii to Wii U since the tablet controller is much different. All they got to do is make it clear that it is for a completely new console and not a new peripheral for Wii. Sounds ridiculous but casual gamers really don't know.

A re-designed 3DS doesn't seem like its coming ANY time soon. Its pointless. The Circle Pad Pro is enough. I mean, I know they'll do it sooner or later, but whether or not theyll add another slide pad is unknown IMO.

We all know now that the name isn't changing, and I absolutely agree with Matt that it was the right decision, despite the drawbacks to that decision.

Nintendo's big IPs are all very distinct from each other. One place they don't currently have one is in FPS. (They did- through their once great developer- create Goldeneye, which was revolutionary, and then Perfect Dark which attempted to continue that success, but attempts to recapture that success are misguided.) I want to see a Nintendo-style FPS that does for the genre what Smash Bros did for fighters!

Now that Nintendo has smashed the competition once again, I'm looking back to see how many of the 8 predictions I got correct.

Change the name from Wii U to something else. Wrong.

More new IP's. Mostly Wrong. We have Nintendo Land, but it uses Miis, not new characters.

More info and release dates on games of E3 2011. Mostly Right. All the 3DS games of last year got dates, but pretty general like holiday 2012.

No redesigned 3DS. Right.

New Zelda on 3DS. Wrong. Although tomorrow is a special one hour Nintendo Direct at 6pm focusing on new 3DS software. Stay tuned...

Share the stage with third party devs. Right.

New Retro Studios project. Wrong. Which irks me.

Online service that rivals competitors. Right. Debatable, but if anyone was expecting something that looked exactly like the other services without that unique Nintendo look, they would be wrong from the start.

So 4/8 from me. If Nintendo shows us new 3DS Zelda tomorrow that will up my %. Also E3 is still going strong. If Retro drops something huge on the showroom floor that will be another correct answer. Let's hope it happens, but not likely.

They didnt smash the competition. all they did was unsell all the fence sitters on the WiiU. Pikmin 3 and New Super Mario bros wiiU? A bunch of ports of xbox and ps3 games? Oh I forgot Scribblenauts and yet another Lego game.

Nothing they showed looked like it was any better than the 360 or PS3. Leads credence to the rumors some developers were saying its not as powerful as the 360 and PS3. Scary knowing the next consoles from the competitors are right around the corner.

I really dont understand Nintendo at this point. The other 2 guys didnt have spectacular conferences Hell Id give Microsoft a B score as the highest.

I read through a 10 page thread on Neogaf asking are you planning on buying the WiiU? this went up after the conference. Im not exagerting when I say 90% said no.

I'm not sure I would rest my decision on a bunch of rabid Nintendo haters. I enjoyed what I saw. I've read a few reviews so far from multi console sites. One put Sony on top, the other Nintendo. Both gave Microsoft a D-. I know these reviewers are just one opinion like anyone that makes a comment on a post or story, but I do hold their opinion in a higher regard since they know more about the industry than a 10 year old that likes to cuss at others on Xbox Live and tells everyone how much they hate everything from fellow gamers to their moms. IGN doesn't give out review scores but they seemed to favor Microsoft.

Don't forget they also had ZombieU which is not a port or a kids game. Granted, it's Ubisoft, and Ubisoft almost always disappoints me- especially with launch titles. (Ghost Recon Shadow Wars being a notable exception.) Still- Zombies! They showed us almost nothing about the game, though, other than you can scan stuff and messily dispatch zombies. Not exactly ground-breaking, but I'm hoping there's more to it. They did say you can become a zombie, so I'm hoping for some multiplayer action a-la RE Outbreak or any of several zombie-related halflife mods.

Also, M$ and Ph-ony fans will never be able to appreciate Nintendo Park. It's not an FPS, so that rules most M$ fans out. There's no blood, sex, or foul language, so that rules the rest of the M$ fans out, as well as all of the Ph-ony fans. I am really excited for the asymmetric gaming it offers. I have long loved such games, which have been a rarity in the past. (Pac-Man versus is a good example of this.) While that game was small and simple- more of a curiosity- this game is fully-realized multiplayer zaniness! The idea of chasing people down by controlling two guys separately with two joysticks just tickles me.

The possibilities for much, much deeper asymmetric gameplay are endless, but that's not all I can forsee with this system. If anyone isn't excited by what this controller can do, they are completely unimaginative. This is not surprising from those who prefer more of t he same with each new console than innovation. They can't even picture something they haven't experienced before. These are the same kind of people who made the decision to close the US patent office in the 1800s because everything had been invented already. Idiots.

I could write for a long, long time about all of the ideas in my head for this controller. Just one example- a Mechwarrior game with a complete mech control panel on the touch screen and the ability to hold the controller up and use it to look 360 degrees around your mech like in that post-presentation video. I'll stop there for now.

Nintendo also helped allay fears that they weren't focusing on online. Is it going to be fair/good/great/poor? Time will tell, but it's clear they've given it a lot of thought. Did the show chase fence-sitters away? With all due respect, Triz, I do not understand that assertion. I can understand if people just don't get it, yet, but I saw nothing to chase anyone away. I agree that most of the heavy-hitting 3rd party titles are all ports, but I think it at least sends the message to them that Nintendo will have the games they want in the future.

It's funny how some will make a knee jerk reaction of "being bold" and proclaim they aren't getting a Wii U. They do realize that there is still MUCH we don't know about it right? Just because it wasn't in the press conference doesn't mean it won't happen or doesn't exist. About 5 months until Wii U launches. Mark my words, Nintendo will continue to drop info on Wii U until it arrives. E3 is not even over and they've dropped more info already that the Wii U will support 2 GamePads, along with the bonus video that went more in depth on Nintendo Land and the Panorama View capabilities.

As far as ports of older games from other consoles...did you know there are only 3? Batman, Mass Effect 3, and Ninja Gaiden. If I'm missing any I apologize. That is all I saw at the conference. Nintendo is publishing Ninja Gaiden and working to improve it so it won't suck as much as it did in the first version. Also can you really blame Nintendo for allowing this to happen? If you were Nintendo and a third party company comes to you and asks if they can port one of their best games to your console...do you really say no? Many of these third party developers haven't had the tech long enough to build a Wii U game from the ground up but don't want to be left out of the launch. The simplest way to be there from the beginning is to add new functionality with the GamePad. If they don't, they allow Ubisoft to once again be the only third party company to be there day one raking in the dough.

I am so pumped for this system. There is a possibility that Nintendo Land will be a pack in too! Cross your fingers.

And now for how I scored the conferences:


Nintendo :: A+

Microsoft :: B+

Ubisoft :: B+

EA :: B

Konami :: C+

Sony :: C-

I'd give Nintendo an A- since they were missing some things and they clearly could have done more to really wow people. They need to be better prepared for something that's supposed to be released this year.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/e3-announcement-nintendo-updates-classic-games-for-new-wii-u-console/2012/06/05/gJQAv7IpGV_story_1.html

That article seems to think it will cost $250. If that's the case, count me in. If not- I will very probably wait awhile- something I haven't done... ever. I got the SNES day 1. I was too young to buy my own NES, so I didn't get one until a couple years after it came out.

Did you catch the 3DS conference? Another plethora of titles shown there, 15 in all. Nothing we didn't know about but when you look at it all, we have a great lineup in store. I think the 3DS conference was better than any of the big conferences. A true focus on games, games, and more games.

I like how there will be a nice collection of games on Wii U that will cater to core gamers, even if some are already out there, but I also saw that they are not quite ready to determine that casual gamers have given up on Nintendo. I think there are still many casual gamers playing Wii. You just have to look at how long these Just Dance games stay in the top 10 month after month to realize this is a market Nintendo captured during the Wii and in many instances still has. Nintendo has been able to make games that appeal to all types of gamers and if they continue to do that while bringing in core gamer games from third party developers, the Wii U will have a bright future

My prediction is that we won't see another PlayStation or Xbox until 2014 so this gives Nintendo some time to build up a solid library. Not quite sure what the launch games will be, but on new tech alone I see the Wii U pushing through 6 million by January 2013.

I saw the 3DS show and I must say it dismayed me greatly. I can't possibly afford all of these must-haves, nor would I have the time to play them if I did buy them! Slow down, guys!!!

Haven't watched much of anything this year. Been pretty busy. But I do know that the Wii U excites me every time i see it. Do I worry about its power? No. Do I worry whether it will cater to one idiot group of "gamers" or another? No. What do I see? Nintendo Land.

IDGAF about anything else. If they won't make a real life park, this is the closest I'm gonna get, so gimme.

Let's be fair, Z. If the Wii-U has enough horsepower to make the HD eyecandy, some of the less enlightened among gamers might be persuaded to jump to Nintendo. (Let's face it- they're not known for their loyalty.) If they do, some might say, "hey, I know I bought this for the latest EA or Ubisoft shooter, but since I already own the system, i might as well grab one of these first party Nintendo games the casual crowd is always raving about and give it a shot... HOLY CRAP, WHY HAVE I WASTED MY LIFE?!?!?!" See? Some might finally see the error of their ways. Don't be so selfish, Z. Let others know the joy of true gaming goodness.

Nah, shariong the good stuff makes the good stuff common crap.

Some more spec info has been released and it seems it will be more powerful in some instances and not in others compared to current gen HD consoles. Here's a lot of content on the matter to chew on:

Quote :

The CPU

- IBM-made CPU
- three Power PC core
- out of order execution is supported
- lower clock speed than 360/PS3

RAM

- 1GB of RAM is available to games
- twice the level of PS3/360

GPU

- custom AMD 7 series GPU
- supports DirectX 10 and shader 4 type features
- eDRAM is embedded in the GPU custom chip in a similar way to the Wii
- 32MB eDRAM

Power in general, Nintendo considered use of 4 GamePads originally

"It's comparable to the current generation and a bit more powerful than that. "The funny thing about Wii U is, as each week went on, we discovered more cool things we could do with it. It's very much a fast-moving space with shifting sands. Because we were fairly early on with this, the specification for the machine wasn't nailed down. In fact, Nintendo were still chasing the idea of having four of the tablets running concurrently. Now they've stepped away from that and said you can have up to two depending on what you're doing in the game. That's given us a base level specification which has changed our thinking and some of our design.

Now we've got a final specification of what's going to be delivered on release, we're re-factoring a lot of our designs because the assumptions we made are now in concrete. We know what the specification is going to be.

As game producers and consumers, of course we would be absolutely delighted if the thing would run four Wii U tablets. That would be great. And it might even be part of their strategy for the next evolution if they do another rev of hardware. But at the moment it's purely limited to processing and signal transmission bandwidth and a combination thereof." - Blitz Games Studios' design director John Nash

"The Wii U is a nice console to work with because it's got so much RAM in comparison [to the PS3 and Xbox 360]. For E3 we simply dumped the whole game into memory and never once used the disc after the content was loaded from it." - Anonymous dev

- (Wii U version of another company's game will be ) "the smoothest console version"

"We're a GPU-heavy game. Wii U has a powerful GPU with more oomph than the rivals - and is more modern in architecture and shader support, which may come in handy later on. The CPU on the other hand is a different question. We are not limited by it but some other games might suffer from it. Still, because of the GPU, I expect most multi-platform games to look the best on Wii U, even if the difference might not be huge sometimes."

Dual GamePad streaming brings up framerate issues

"That's one of the areas we're looking at to find out if that's always the case. And even if it is, if you want to use two screens, you need to design around that and produce a game genre, type and set of mechanics where that, fundamentally, is not going to cause any problem whatsoever.

The holy grail of everything having to run at 60 frames per second is great, but it's only actually that important when you're using a twitch game or a shooter or a racer. Below that, it doesn't matter at all. If you're playing a third-person character game then it absolutely doesn't matter." - Blitz Games Studios' design director John Nash

1080p support

"GPU fillrate is not a major bottleneck for our game, so we should be fine rendering our game in 1080p. In fact, it already runs on 1080p on the Wii U, without problems. It is an extra framebuffer, which obviously consumes some memory, but with Toki Tori we don't run into memory problems, so this extra buffer isn't a problem." - Two Tribes boss Martijn Reuvers

Why specs don't matter

"It's very easy for people to get hung up on hardware specs and technical specs. It's great to have a massive processor that's got a graphics pipeline that uses DX11, but what people need to focus on particularly for games going forward, is, what kind of experience can you build in the space of possibility afforded by the hardware in terms of features? Not in clock cycles. Does it connect out to the internet well? Does it connect to mobile well? How does it connect to your other friends and involve them in that experience? That's where games are moving forwards.

Nintendo's approach is to say, we're going to package that other screen with the console straight out of the box so there's nothing to worry about and the developers have a stable platform, whereas maybe the other platform holders are saying, maybe we're going to involve other devices. That will bring another set of problems. Sony and Microsoft will go toe to toe again as they have done on this rev. They will do the same on the next one. Nintendo are doing something different.

There's going to be some geek out there who will screwdriver that processor out from the machine, run it through all the tests and compare it to Pentium 3 upwards and tell everybody how rubbish it is. Of course they will. That's great and I applaud people for doing such things. However, as a game designer that means absolutely nothing to me.

On the hype rollercoaster ride we go on with all new hardware, everybody's super-focused on specific details, processor speed, RAM and all of that stuff. But people need to look beyond that, because Nintendo's rationale in terms of building game platforms and exploiting their huge roster of cool IP is to build a piece of hardware that allows them to explore new ways to interact with their IP. That's their rationale behind designing hardware.

It's not about beating everyone else in a surface shader processing clock speed war. That's not what they're about. They're about saying, we've got this great roster of IP, all these great characters, how do we build a piece of cost-effective hardware - they're a business, they've got to make profit - that will allow our players, our very loyal Nintendo players, to interact with this IP and great worlds and characters in a new way?

"If you think about the Wii U in that light, suddenly it makes a huge amount of sense. Suddenly we're going to be able to explore the world of Zelda and Mario in a new way with our friends. And that's the rationale behind that platform. It's not a gunning war in terms of hardware. As soon as you do that, you start to think about the games in a different way. You start to get excited about what it affords you as a game designer, and players should get very excited about it as well."

It's nice to hear honest comments from developers that are actually working on games for Wii-U. I found these comments to be a testament to what Nintendo is. Not the best specs, not the most expensive hardware, but new innovative experiences. This industry would have died years ago if Nintendo wasn't around. The industry relies on Nintendo to introduce new ideas so the other guys can emulate their ideas as best as possible. With no Nintendo there would be no cross-play, no kinect, no move, no smart glass. We would have shooter after shooter after shooter, which would bury the industry in lack of innovation and varied game experiences. Those that hate Nintendo and wish they would get out of the hardware business don't even know the grave outcome the industry would endure.

I might also point out that clock speed is virtually meaningless. People used to use it as a way to compare processors a LONG time ago because there was no other reasonable way to do so for the layperson, and even then it was an imperfect measure at best. (For the longest time, AMD processors were known for accomplishing more with lower clock speeds than their equivalent Pentium processors.)

Saying a processor with a higher clock speed is better than another completely different processor with a lower speed is like saying one car is faster than another because its engine gets higher RPMs. Nonsense!

Antilles FTW!