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Nintendo “Disappointed” with its E3 Performance
Nintendo of America sales and marketing boss Cammie Dunaway has revealed that the company was disappointed with its showing at this year’s E3 Media and Business Summit, which drew criticism from some sections of the gaming community, notably core gamers.
“I would say the message is we were disappointed with our performance at E3,” Dunaway told VGChartz. “There were titles like Wario which we think will be really fun titles that we should have showcased.
“We were excited that Mr. Miyamoto made the commitment that Pikmin is coming. It would have been nice if we could have said that on stage. But, we think it was a good recognition for us that we care for our core fans, and not just the new people who are now discovering Nintendo.”
In the wake of Nintendo's E3 press conference the company's American president Reggie Fils-Aime claimed that Nintendo wasn't ignoring the core gamer market, while star designer Shigeru Miyamoto also stressed the importance of the market.
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Hardcore gamers don't really play Wii. It is a small (maybe the smallest?) percentage of people who own and regularily play it. Why go to E3 (which everyone states is a shell of it's former glory) and put on a big, expensive show, if no one is going to be watching? So the slender percentage of hardcore gamers that care have something to talk about? Not good business sense. Save your money and big titles for when your main audience is actually watching.
Ozzman_79, good point. But if that was their reasoning for not showing off big titles that would interest the hardcore, why would they apologize after those same hardcore fans who DO care about the Wii still (and even just the Press themselves ripping them apart, Game Informer gave them a D for their E3 performance) complained the show sucked? They would be contradicting themselves and the whole reason why they went casual at E3 in the first place.
Well, NickgamertagO1, since I don't work for Nintendo, I can't say for sure, but my best guess is they did it as lip service to the media and hardcore fans that were complaining. As you mentionned, if they were REALLY bothered by it, they wouldn't have done it in the first place. I suspect it was just a half-hearted attempt to "make good" with the people that were bothered by it.
Well,
Killer Instinct is a Rare IP and thus, it belongs to MS.
EDIT:
Strange, I pressed reply to TechRyzes comment and my post still came on top, huh...
Nintendo could also do with releasing classic controller adaptors that let us use MegaDrive, Saturn, Master System, SNES, NES & N64 controllers with the Wii.
This console has masses of hardcore potential - Nintendo are going to seriously shoot themselves in the foot for the Next Gen if they let all of the hardcore abandon them and head to 360 land.
A lot of kids with Wii consoles are beginning to trade them in due to a lack of the types of game they want to play. The big game buyers aren't going to settle for Wii Sports 2 and Big Brain Academy for very long.
Sort it, Ninty.
Oh well. Atleast Capcom announced Dead Rising.
I was once a huge NIntendo fan all the way up to the finer days of the gamecube (right when it came out). Then Hiroshi Yamauchi kept saying the most stupid things so I finally decided to get the "lame" xbox (and haven't gone back) since I hated the PS2 so much. Wether or not NIntendo messed up E3, like some people said already, the people that are making the Wii and DS such a success could care less about E3, they probably don't even know that it is. The Wii is so succesful because of the casual mom and grandma market, the harcore jumped ship pretty much with the N64 and completely abonded them by the time the gamecube died. I don't think their sales will slow whatsoever after their poor showing at E3. Nintendo knows they already lost the hardcore and most of their loyal followers, no reason to try to cater to them any more. The GameCube was their last attempt at that, and we all know how well that turned out.
I think that Nintendo does have some great minds working for them, however, their "child mind" focus is just killing them. I swore by Nintendo all the way, even in heated debates against Sega Genesis users, until the PS1 jumped on the scene. I still dig their innovation, while looking at them from afar but I really think that Nintendo has become a novely act and losing ground to the 360s/PS3s of the world. The Wii, I read and hear, has lost steam in the eyes of more sophisticated gamers or never even caught on with them, at all. Nintendo seems to be almost as prideful as their once fearless leader, uhhh, I forget his name :\
Hiroshi Yamauchi :)
The thing is, everyone in their marketing department should be axed. If you go to the "biggest" games expo in North America without showing anything bleeding edge, you are an idiot. It's all about showmanship. Would P.T. Barnum, at the height of his circuses popularity invited all the press over to show them a bunch of kittens and puppies?
Brian
www.brianwoods.com
The problem is they pre-announced that "they would have a lot for core gamers this year". And then they didn't deliver. The misunderstanding comes from the fact that core gamers wanted to see Nintendo expand the range beyond "cute games". So as big as Animal Crossing or Wii Sports 2 can be, it failed to achieve that. To announce right after the show that games like Wario, Pikmin and a new Mario/Zelda are coming is still not doing the trick of diversifying the range. What is missing so far are presentations of Factor 5's Kid Icarus, F-Zero, Star Fox, Pilotwings, Wave Race, Eternal Darkness 2, Disaster Day, Project HAMMER and such. Not just one of these, but all of the above. Then, you also need to show the third-party flow is on the way, either by announcing that GTA will actually come to both platforms and not just the DS, or by putting Kojima on stage to say that a special episode of MGS is coming - even if there wouldn't be any footage yet to illustrate these two announces. You'd also want SEGA to confirm the Shenmue Wii rumour or to announce that apart from Sonic, Samba de Amigo and Nights, some other names from the past would make the cut, like Shinobi, Golden Axe or Panzer Dragoon, and that apart from Ghost Squad and HoD, some other arcade hits would be ported, like Afterburner Climax to name just one. Finally, you should have given some stage exposure to Platinum's MadWorld.
Despite the problems it is experiencing, E3 is still an important show in the gaming calendar. You only need to look at the buzzing forums during the show to see that people pay very close attention to what is going on at the convention, and to regard it as unimportant is to underestimate its ability to capture the eyes of the gaming world.
This is why Nintendo have issued a statement such as this. Not only did they make a huge miscalculation concerning the audience they were addressing, and the subsequent content of their presentation, but they also seem to be surprised by the sheer volume of discussions it has caused. The fact that the vast majority of opinion has been negative must be of great concern, despite the Wii and DS's ongoing astronomical sales.
This is the first olive branch to the core gaming community. Something tells me that we will we see many more soon; fingers crossed that they will be games rather than promises.
Hopefully a HDD or SSD and an F-Zero or Killer Instinct announcement.
Saturn games on the Virtual Console will also be a shot in the arm for the core Wii audience.
Right now, I'm planning on importing a US Wii, as NoE doesn't seem to know it's backside from its elbow, but even this is on hold as Nintendo don't seem to want to encourage or develop many games that appeal to me.
Last time round, with the Gamecube, they said that online was unimportant - so they didn't want my money obviously.
This time, I might as well wait for M$ to release a pointing device for my 360 and just buy that.
Sigh. I'll just continue to buy the odd game for my younger sister every-so-often.
Not sure why they're so concerned about their E3 performance, really. After countless people, in the business and otherwise, complain about how much of a non-event it was and how it should just shape up or go away, who really puts stock in the show anymore, and what goes on at it?
Lesson learned - this is what happens when you write your E3 presentation on a roll of toilet paper after a druken night at the bar.
Nintendo needs to step back and reset their entire marketing strategy.
Nice to see someone from Nintendo finally admit that they ignored the people who got them off the ground back in the NES day.
I found that their presentation was interesting, but the people they were trying to sell to have no interest or at least very little interest in what happens at E3. Most of the new gamers that are buying the Wii are not the types to read video game news sites and follow reports from E3.
You would be lucky to find these people thumbing through the video game magazines in the super market.
That is just not their level of interest. They make most if not all their purchases by walking down the Walmart game aisle and looking at the game packaging.
They did not benefit from the E3 show at all.