Tweet
This article is VERY good [MENTION=856]LarsVerb [MENTION=2399]GreenL420 [MENTION=580]mat_turbo. It's long but worth the read. Describes how nintendo has majorly failed perfectly
Victory was easily within its grasp… what happened?
This past Monday I witnessed a remarkable thing. A man stood on a stage with a piece of black cloth draped over some sort of new product. Suspense built within me. I had to know what was under that fabric, like a cat that demands to know the contents of an empty box. Oddly enough, I already knew more or less what was under there. It was a laptop. A new MacBook Pro. I already knew what it would look like – much like the ones that preceded it. And, really, all of the changes to this new model would be internal, invisible to my eyes. Yet I wanted that cloth lifted so bad.
Nintendo could learn a considerable amount from Apple’s showmanship. That simple reveal of the new MacBook Pro, a small element of a larger two-hour conference, held more significance and potency than anything Nintendo managed last week at E3 2012. Despite showcasing its new home console, Wii U, in full for the first time, and having a portable entering its prime, Nintendo wasn’t able to convince anyone that its strategy was right, that its vision for gaming had significant merit. What’s more remarkable is the company seemed poised to sweep into the show in a position of power, having a field to showcase its wares free from rivals’ next-generation efforts or major announcements that threatened to steal its thunder. In every way, Nintendo’s failure to impress at this year’s show was of its own making, of deliberate choices that mixed to underwhelm gamers of all types. Here’s how the House of Mario got everything wrong.
The Expectations
Nintendo’s E3 disappointment actually traces back to everything the company said and did in the months and weeks leading up to the show. Every time global president Satoru Iwata mentioned Wii U, whether in an investor Q&A, a presentation or an interview, he pointed towards E3 2012 as the platform’s big unveiling. This would be the show to end all shows, the moment where the company concretely and definitively proved why its new idea was not only worthy of following Wii, and carrying that platform’s name, but effectively building an expensive tablet into a conventional controller. When Nintendo says it’s ready to innovate the way we play games, we pay attention. This is the company responsible for so many modern standards it’s difficult to quantify them all. The entire industry sold Wii short when it was first announced, yet Nintendo proved them wrong. This time around, expectations were simply higher. People expect more from Nintendo now.
Those expectations were sent even higher when Nintendo confirmed two titles it would show at E3 2012 – Mario U and Pikmin 3. It announced a significant game like New Super Mario Bros. 2 in an online broadcast months prior. Though hardly surprising by any means, this unprecedented move inevitably implied one thing: Nintendo had far more to show than these games. Unfair? Probably. But that’s how E3 works -- it is as much a measure of what is shown as what is not -- or what people think will be shown.
Despite having no intent of making any major announcements, Nintendo set aside time to conduct four different presentations spanning over four hours of material. Though many details were confirmed, the conferences ultimately started revisiting the same topics, and in some cases discussed nothing new at all. It was as if Nintendo didn’t have enough material to fill its time, which begged the question why it would host those events at all. Top to bottom, how Nintendo actually brought its message to the public was perhaps its biggest failing.
The Presentations
Nintendo had some great content to showcase at this year’s E3. What it didn’t do, however, was present that content well. Some of Wii U’s most interesting games – ZombiU and Project P-100, for example – were either left out of the show entirely or partly announced the day before – with a less-than-compelling follow-up during Nintendo’s show. Rayman Legends had a fantastic showing on Wii U – but missed Nintendo’s conference completely.
It didn’t help that Nintendo seemed unable to showcase its games in a way that really drove home that it was moving into an HD era, or that proved its GamePad concept more than the year prior. Pikmin 3 looked like a Wii game scaled up. Mario U’s most impressive moment was fleeting – a lightning quick look at a level based on Starry Night.
As a proof of concept, as a modern equivalent to Wii Sports, Nintendo Land is undeniably a success. In fact the mini-game collection seems to dwarf its predecessor in size and scope, and including Nintendo’s greatest franchises as window dressing is one of the smartest moves the publisher has made in a while.
But it’s still Wii Sports, and by Nintendo’s own admission. That this game is largely expected to be packed-in with the system upon release, a free game that is designed to lure casual and core gamers in for more, puts this game in a very particular place. This is not a new Mario game. This is not a new Zelda game. And that’s why this was the worst possible ‘final reveal’ Nintendo could have made. No doubt many will sell Nintendo Land short until the moment they play it. But Nintendo sold the potential of its system short by positioning this as the key promise for the future. It is the promise of now – of Wii U’s immediate launch – not the future.
The same extends to Nintendo’s third party offerings. Virtually everything highlighted by the company during its press conference, Batman, Ninja Gaiden and Darksiders II among them, were games that had already been revealed at last year’s conference. More importantly, these games have been or will be on other systems by the time Wii U launches. The biggest third party revelation Nintendo seemed to muster was Mass Effect 3, which arrived for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 several months ago. The advantage brought on by the GamePad is certainly interesting, but it doesn’t make old games new again. The Wii U version of Arkham City might be the best experience, but it’s still fundamentally the same experience.
More telling was what Nintendo wasn’t able to announce. We didn’t hear of BioShock Infinite, Tomb Raider, Watch Dogs or Resident Evil 6. Grand Theft Auto V was nowhere to be seen. If it wasn’t going to tip its own hand, and it wanted to highlight third party content that was due before the end of the year, Nintendo at least needed to reinforce the notion that its system would have most everything the competition would have. Nintendo Land is great, but it’s not going to make up for the lack of Black Ops II. The silence in this regard was deafening. The more Nintendo showcased enhanced ports of existing games, the more it tried to point to those aging titles as evidence of partner support, the more the missing content stood out.
The Intentions
Nintendo had one other goal to meet at this year’s show. It had to prove why Wii U would have longevity. The publisher chose to focus on games that would be available in the launch window. That’s a fine strategy, one that reinforces concrete examples that fans can count on in the very near future. Yet a console debut needs a bit more. Fans need to understand that big things are on the horizon, particularly when a 2D Mario and mini-game collection are the broad strokes of first party support before the year’s end.
What’s strange is that Nintendo is the master of looking towards the future. Time and time again, the publisher shows a trailer, logo or piece of key art that signifies the arrival of a grand new Zelda or Mario game, and the fans go wild. Last year it merely mentioned the presence of Super Smash Bros., and millions worldwide instantly paid attention. When the publisher unveiled the Nintendo 3DS, it merely placed logo after logo on a slide, and let the volume and significance of those franchises do all the talking. E3 2004, the first year Reggie Fils-Aime stood on stage, marked one of Nintendo’s greatest reveals, as it revealed the first Twilight Princess trailer. The game wouldn’t arrive until 2006, but not a single Nintendo fan cared. Knowing that game was coming was reason enough to look forward to the years to come.
This year, Nintendo did none of that. It announced no new games for the Nintendo 3DS (and only had two of its own portable titles on the show floor). In fact that entire platform, despite a dedicated conference towards the end of E3, felt like a strange afterthought. It announced only a couple Wii U games, even leaving some of those out of its presentation entirely. Whatever the company’s goals, one of them certainly wasn’t to plant a vision of the future in the eyes of Nintendo fans worldwide.
Nintendo’s failure to win E3 2012 was entirely of its own making. The publisher had momentum headed into the show, and as Microsoft and Sony were stuck highlighting “surprises” everyone had heard about, Nintendo had the promise of being able to show something new, something innovative. Yet what resulted felt like the company was intent on revisiting the same ideas it had presented the year before, albeit with more detail. Curiously the company repeated itself, spending valuable time at multiple presentations going over the same details.
High expectations. Poor presentation. A lack of substance. A narrow focus. Any publisher can be guilty of some of these items at any given E3. Nintendo somehow managed to do all of them in one year, and what’s worse is that it genuinely had some very interesting things to say. It simply said them in the wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong way. It’s certainly true that the company needed to bring more third party announcements, and it certainly could have used a nod towards a future Zelda or Metroid project, but it could have worked with the material it had. It’s as if a company, one that absolutely has mastered the art of revealing products to rabid fans, simply forgot what it’s doing.
In other words, it should have been Nintendo with that black cloth draped over a Wii U controller. Not Apple with its laptop.
Victory was easily within its grasp… what happened?
This past Monday I witnessed a remarkable thing. A man stood on a stage with a piece of black cloth draped over some sort of new product. Suspense built within me. I had to know what was under that fabric, like a cat that demands to know the contents of an empty box. Oddly enough, I already knew more or less what was under there. It was a laptop. A new MacBook Pro. I already knew what it would look like – much like the ones that preceded it. And, really, all of the changes to this new model would be internal, invisible to my eyes. Yet I wanted that cloth lifted so bad.
Nintendo could learn a considerable amount from Apple’s showmanship. That simple reveal of the new MacBook Pro, a small element of a larger two-hour conference, held more significance and potency than anything Nintendo managed last week at E3 2012. Despite showcasing its new home console, Wii U, in full for the first time, and having a portable entering its prime, Nintendo wasn’t able to convince anyone that its strategy was right, that its vision for gaming had significant merit. What’s more remarkable is the company seemed poised to sweep into the show in a position of power, having a field to showcase its wares free from rivals’ next-generation efforts or major announcements that threatened to steal its thunder. In every way, Nintendo’s failure to impress at this year’s show was of its own making, of deliberate choices that mixed to underwhelm gamers of all types. Here’s how the House of Mario got everything wrong.
The Expectations
Nintendo’s E3 disappointment actually traces back to everything the company said and did in the months and weeks leading up to the show. Every time global president Satoru Iwata mentioned Wii U, whether in an investor Q&A, a presentation or an interview, he pointed towards E3 2012 as the platform’s big unveiling. This would be the show to end all shows, the moment where the company concretely and definitively proved why its new idea was not only worthy of following Wii, and carrying that platform’s name, but effectively building an expensive tablet into a conventional controller. When Nintendo says it’s ready to innovate the way we play games, we pay attention. This is the company responsible for so many modern standards it’s difficult to quantify them all. The entire industry sold Wii short when it was first announced, yet Nintendo proved them wrong. This time around, expectations were simply higher. People expect more from Nintendo now.
Those expectations were sent even higher when Nintendo confirmed two titles it would show at E3 2012 – Mario U and Pikmin 3. It announced a significant game like New Super Mario Bros. 2 in an online broadcast months prior. Though hardly surprising by any means, this unprecedented move inevitably implied one thing: Nintendo had far more to show than these games. Unfair? Probably. But that’s how E3 works -- it is as much a measure of what is shown as what is not -- or what people think will be shown.
Despite having no intent of making any major announcements, Nintendo set aside time to conduct four different presentations spanning over four hours of material. Though many details were confirmed, the conferences ultimately started revisiting the same topics, and in some cases discussed nothing new at all. It was as if Nintendo didn’t have enough material to fill its time, which begged the question why it would host those events at all. Top to bottom, how Nintendo actually brought its message to the public was perhaps its biggest failing.
The Presentations
Nintendo had some great content to showcase at this year’s E3. What it didn’t do, however, was present that content well. Some of Wii U’s most interesting games – ZombiU and Project P-100, for example – were either left out of the show entirely or partly announced the day before – with a less-than-compelling follow-up during Nintendo’s show. Rayman Legends had a fantastic showing on Wii U – but missed Nintendo’s conference completely.
It didn’t help that Nintendo seemed unable to showcase its games in a way that really drove home that it was moving into an HD era, or that proved its GamePad concept more than the year prior. Pikmin 3 looked like a Wii game scaled up. Mario U’s most impressive moment was fleeting – a lightning quick look at a level based on Starry Night.
As a proof of concept, as a modern equivalent to Wii Sports, Nintendo Land is undeniably a success. In fact the mini-game collection seems to dwarf its predecessor in size and scope, and including Nintendo’s greatest franchises as window dressing is one of the smartest moves the publisher has made in a while.
But it’s still Wii Sports, and by Nintendo’s own admission. That this game is largely expected to be packed-in with the system upon release, a free game that is designed to lure casual and core gamers in for more, puts this game in a very particular place. This is not a new Mario game. This is not a new Zelda game. And that’s why this was the worst possible ‘final reveal’ Nintendo could have made. No doubt many will sell Nintendo Land short until the moment they play it. But Nintendo sold the potential of its system short by positioning this as the key promise for the future. It is the promise of now – of Wii U’s immediate launch – not the future.
The same extends to Nintendo’s third party offerings. Virtually everything highlighted by the company during its press conference, Batman, Ninja Gaiden and Darksiders II among them, were games that had already been revealed at last year’s conference. More importantly, these games have been or will be on other systems by the time Wii U launches. The biggest third party revelation Nintendo seemed to muster was Mass Effect 3, which arrived for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 several months ago. The advantage brought on by the GamePad is certainly interesting, but it doesn’t make old games new again. The Wii U version of Arkham City might be the best experience, but it’s still fundamentally the same experience.
More telling was what Nintendo wasn’t able to announce. We didn’t hear of BioShock Infinite, Tomb Raider, Watch Dogs or Resident Evil 6. Grand Theft Auto V was nowhere to be seen. If it wasn’t going to tip its own hand, and it wanted to highlight third party content that was due before the end of the year, Nintendo at least needed to reinforce the notion that its system would have most everything the competition would have. Nintendo Land is great, but it’s not going to make up for the lack of Black Ops II. The silence in this regard was deafening. The more Nintendo showcased enhanced ports of existing games, the more it tried to point to those aging titles as evidence of partner support, the more the missing content stood out.
The Intentions
Nintendo had one other goal to meet at this year’s show. It had to prove why Wii U would have longevity. The publisher chose to focus on games that would be available in the launch window. That’s a fine strategy, one that reinforces concrete examples that fans can count on in the very near future. Yet a console debut needs a bit more. Fans need to understand that big things are on the horizon, particularly when a 2D Mario and mini-game collection are the broad strokes of first party support before the year’s end.
What’s strange is that Nintendo is the master of looking towards the future. Time and time again, the publisher shows a trailer, logo or piece of key art that signifies the arrival of a grand new Zelda or Mario game, and the fans go wild. Last year it merely mentioned the presence of Super Smash Bros., and millions worldwide instantly paid attention. When the publisher unveiled the Nintendo 3DS, it merely placed logo after logo on a slide, and let the volume and significance of those franchises do all the talking. E3 2004, the first year Reggie Fils-Aime stood on stage, marked one of Nintendo’s greatest reveals, as it revealed the first Twilight Princess trailer. The game wouldn’t arrive until 2006, but not a single Nintendo fan cared. Knowing that game was coming was reason enough to look forward to the years to come.
This year, Nintendo did none of that. It announced no new games for the Nintendo 3DS (and only had two of its own portable titles on the show floor). In fact that entire platform, despite a dedicated conference towards the end of E3, felt like a strange afterthought. It announced only a couple Wii U games, even leaving some of those out of its presentation entirely. Whatever the company’s goals, one of them certainly wasn’t to plant a vision of the future in the eyes of Nintendo fans worldwide.
Nintendo’s failure to win E3 2012 was entirely of its own making. The publisher had momentum headed into the show, and as Microsoft and Sony were stuck highlighting “surprises” everyone had heard about, Nintendo had the promise of being able to show something new, something innovative. Yet what resulted felt like the company was intent on revisiting the same ideas it had presented the year before, albeit with more detail. Curiously the company repeated itself, spending valuable time at multiple presentations going over the same details.
High expectations. Poor presentation. A lack of substance. A narrow focus. Any publisher can be guilty of some of these items at any given E3. Nintendo somehow managed to do all of them in one year, and what’s worse is that it genuinely had some very interesting things to say. It simply said them in the wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong way. It’s certainly true that the company needed to bring more third party announcements, and it certainly could have used a nod towards a future Zelda or Metroid project, but it could have worked with the material it had. It’s as if a company, one that absolutely has mastered the art of revealing products to rabid fans, simply forgot what it’s doing.
In other words, it should have been Nintendo with that black cloth draped over a Wii U controller. Not Apple with its laptop.
Comment