7/22/08
ONE GAME ANNOUNCED
AT E3 FOR 2008?
Apparently...
Well, with
another E3 come and gone, we can look back and say, at far as this year is concerned, what a complete waste of time.
With Nintendo being so hell-bent on making sure "casual gamers" know
about their products, it's a wonder they gave the people that were actually paying attention to E3 any notice at all. You
know... actual gamers.
It was so nice of Nintendo
to announce at least one game for the "core", a new Animal Crossing with a room-encompassing voice-chat solution. Not exactly
what we had in mind, but a solution nevertheless. And the eight seconds they spent on vaguely confirming that their internal
development teams were busy making sequels to popular franchises was somewhat refreshing. Although, since E3 is the only media event during the year that Nintendo actually holds a high-profile
press conference for, you'd think they would have come a little better prepared.
The biggest news from the show came a day before the show, When Nintendo released a brief statement
teasing the new Wii MotionPlus attachment giving the Wii Remote yet another peripheral for "more precise wrist-movement tracking".
The only problem is the only game they announced in support of the new attachment is a sequel to Wii Sports, a game that
doesn't interest gamers at all.
Since reliable sources
have been reporting for months that Nintendo is plugging away on a Kid Icarus revival and a third Pikmin for the Wii, it seems
like Nintendo dropped the ball pretty badly this year.
At
least last year they announced release dates for big holiday releases like Mario Galaxy and Smash Bros. Brawl, while unveiling
the long-awaited, inevitable Wii installment of Mario Kart.
But,
as Shigeru Miyamoto put it so kindly this past week: "E3 is no longer a show for us to unveil core games, but more as a place
to show off casual games for the mainstream press". Honestly, it's a wonder game press was even invited at all. An email
sent out to game press with the sentence "Animal Crossing for Wii this holday, with voice-chat" would have been sufficient.
Thanks Nintendo
-SCP
7/22/08
Games To Watch Out For:
Mario Super Sluggers August 2008
Wario Land Shake September 2008
Wii Music Q4 2008
Guitar Hero: World Tour November 2008
Animal
Crossing Wii November
2008
2009 tentative software releases
Kid Icarus Wii - TBA 2009
Kirby Wii
- TBA
Pikmin 3 - TBA 2009
Legend of Zelda Wii - TBA
Mario Galaxy
sequel - TBA
