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E3 2009: Nintendo Media Briefing – Have they abandoned the hardcore?
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From the opening minute, Nintendo pushed their theme, “Everyone’s Game.” The theme represents the company’s focus in terms of who they’re making games for, which is “everybody.” The theme is fine, when you have a catalog of games for the casual gamer and the hardcore game and everyone in between, but that didn’t seem to be the case.
The first game that was introduced was New Super Mario Bros. for Wii. It plays just like the classic Super Mario Bros. games as a side-scroller but with a cleaner look and a few more abilities. The game looks okay, but do we really need another Super Mario Bros. remix?.jpg)
Next up was Wii Fit Plus. Thanks to the original Wii Fit, the video game fitness genre has gone crazy, so of course Nintendo is going to try and cash in once again. Wii Fit Plus features the same format as the original Wii Fit, but with more customizable features in terms of workouts and parts of the body you want to work on. There’s also a collection of mini-games that you can play using the Wii Balance Board.
The mainstream-ness continued with yet again another Wii Sports Resort demo, showing the capabilities of Wii Motion Plus. While some of the little mini-games, like sky-diving, using a bow and arrow and playing a 3-point basketball challenge, we already knew what the peripheral was capable of when the introduced it last year. It was sort of a waste of time. The Wii Motion Plus will also be usable in the upcoming Tiger Woods Golf, EA’s Grand Slam Tennis, and Virtua Tennis.
The Nintendo DS is the best selling video game console right now and the games for it will keep coming. While they did have games targeting girls like Women’s Murder Club and Style Savvy and a couple for the hardcore like Golden Sun DS, Final Fantasy: Crystal Bearers, and C.O.P.: The Recruit. That’s great, Golden Sun is a classic Game Boy game, but they’re all “small” titles.
Nintendo followed that with the Wii Vitality Sensor. Huh? Apparently it’s a new peripheral that you put on your finger and it can sense your mood, heart rate, etc. And what’s it for? No game or program was announced with it, so we can’t imagine what they’re going to do with that.
Nintendo just needs cool games. They tried to impress the hardcore gaming crowd by showing trailers from The Conduit, Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles, and Dead Space: Extraction, which are all great but were announced months ago.
The crowd finally got excited with trailers from Super Mario Galaxy 2 and the Team Ninja-developed Metroid: The Other M, which caters more to the hardcore gamer. But walking away, a gamer may feel like Nintendo is no longer making games for them, but for “everyone.”
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