Nintendo either doesn’t care or doesn’t understand “core” gamers any more

Before E3, undoubtedly hearing complaints that they didn’t care about the core gamer any more, Nintendo said that core gamers would be happy with their E3 showing.  Well, most of the gaming press was pretty disappointed with their press conference, so Nintendo then claimed that Animal Crossing was a “hardcore” title, and then also reversed positions and claimed that actually, they weren’t targeting the core with E3.  Still not satisfied, enterprising journalists followed-up with them again where they reiterated that the hardcore market is “critically important” to them and pointed to Super Mario Sluggers and the as of yet unseen GTA DS as proof.  Realizing that the community was still clearly unsatisfied, in a somewhat amazing development, Nintendo’s President Iwata finally issued an apology for the weak press conference.  But in his apology, he also reveals that he may not really understand core gamers any more:

 ”If there is any perception that Nintendo is ignoring the core gamers, it’s a misunderstanding and we really want to get rid of that misunderstanding by any means. We are sorry about [the E3] media briefings, specifically for those who were expecting to see Nintendo show something about ‘Super Mario’ or ‘Legend of Zelda.’”

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Posted in Nintendo, Commentary, E3 | 11 Comments »

We’ll Do it Live!

It seems the “in” thing to do in survival horror games now is to make accessing your inventory occur in real-time.  That is, when you access your inventory, the game is still “live” and you are open to take hits.  This was the case in the recently released Alone in the Dark game, it is apparently going to be the case in Resident Evil 5, and the Dead Space Producer is bragging that you can’t even pause his game (which I have to imagine, or at least hope he means that you handle your inventory “live”, and not that there’s literally not a pause function in the game, as that may be the one single feature that no publisher in their right mind would ever ship a game without).

I’ll keep this relatively short, but my question is, is this really a good thing?  I like keeping the action moving and having the ability to “quick swap” weapons as you’re now able to in RE5, but I do know that it was helpful in RE4 to sometimes take a look at what’s in your inventory (even in the middle of a fight) and consider what your options might be.  According to the Dead Space Producer, this is exactly what they want me to avoid now, though.  Certainly, this probably creates more tension, but does it also decrease the usability of the game at the same time?  Is the trade-off worth it?

You’ll love it, we swear

Note to Nintendo: when you show a new peripheral, in this case the WiiMotionPlus, make sure we understand what it’s good for and why we need it.  It looks like they demoed just Wii Sports Resort with it, but no other announcements with it or what it really allows developers to do with it.

Incidentally, Wii Sports Resort would be even better if they put the original Wii Sports on the disc as well, sort of creating a “platform” as Rock Band is doing.  They could even add in support for the “WiiMotionPlus” to make the original games even better (if it actually does anything, since they didn’t really make the advantages very clear).

As for Nintendo’s conference overall… it was a bit of a bore.  I didn’t expect it to compete with Microsoft’s because Nintendo and Microsoft are quite honestly playing different games at this point. But I was hoping to at least see an interesting new franchise (for the “core” gamers they supposedly still care about) or at least an update to one of their popular franchises (and Wii Music and Animal Crossing don’t really count).  I really thought we’d at least see a teaser for a new Zelda, or didn’t they announce or strongly hint at a new Kid Icarus game at some point? Instead it seemed to be mostly numbers with a few games that I didn’t really care for, and then telling me that I should “disrupt my thinking” and escape the Matrix so that I care.  As with seemingly everything they produce, though, I’m sure they’ll sell a trillion copies.

Intelligent Criticism

Insult Swordfighting asks whether people really want intelligent criticism (and highlights an interesting GSW feature in which various “intelligent” commentators are interviewed about their writing and experiences - unsurprisingly, we were not featured).  Many of these writers are also contributors to mainstream journalism sites or publications, and so hearing their views on why they run a blog is a fascinating endeavor.

The conclusion IS draws is that, although mainstream pieces draw far more traffic than the typical niche blog noted, readers are slowly and inexorably being drawn to more sophisticated critiques of gaming.  I don’t necessarily disagree - in fact, this site is predicated on that assumption - although I would note that many of the most insightful blogs are still written from the perspective of industry insiders: developers, professional journalists, and so on.  As a result, journalism that truly tackles gamer-specific issues is more nascent than might otherwise appear to be the case.

There is, of course, something to be said about a site where writers feel that they can truly share their musings.  At the same time, it’s worth contemplating that so many people spend their time writing in a voice they don’t think is truly theirs.

Microsoft Gains First Strike and Scores a Critical Hit!

You’ve probably heard by now that one of Sony’s biggest theoretical exclusives, Final Fantasy XIII, is coming to the 360.  To be honest, even before I owned a PS3, this was never a huge concern of mine.  To begin with, I knew the game was basically never coming out.  And as much as I liked Final Fantasy IV, VI and VII, I never really got too into any of the other ones (got close to the end in VIII, barely started IX, played a little bit of X… X-2 and XII are on my shelf unplayed).

But, yeah… I know there are a lot of Final Fantasy fans out there and this will make probably half of them ecstatic, a quarter furious, and a quarter who don’t care.  Either way, this is, at the very least, a major psychological blow to Sony and a big coup for Microsoft.  A friend of mine was literally trying to sell his 360 to pick up a PS3 MGS4 package because he figured he could play MGS4 and (what he most wanted) Final Fantasy XIII whenever it finally came out.  Based on this news, that is no longer going to happen and he is keeping his 360.

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New Quantum of Solace game video does nothing for me

Joystiq seems incredibly enthusiastic about this new footage, but after watching it I’m not even sure why.

I’ll stipulate that I played quite a bit of Goldeneye back in high school, and was also a big fan of Casino Royale, and even the new movie trailer for Quantum of Solace looks great. I also know that the CoD4 engine is quite capable, but most of what we see in the trailer looks, and sounds, rather typical to me.

The first thing I noticed is how poor the sound effect was for the automatic weapon that’s used in the trailer.  It sounds like a typewriter, honestly.  Obviously, this is something that can change easily, so hopefully it will.

Other problems include some jerky animations, a Daniel Craig model that looks sort of plain and lifeless, and the fact that it sort of looks like they’re making Call of Duty: Bond Edition. Just because you’re using the CoD4 engine does not mean that they should be making the game exactly like CoD4.  There are some, potentially, nice additions like a cover system and some 3rd-person camera switches, but the first person stuff looks straight out of CoD.

The game is set to release around the time of the movie, which means they still have a few months to go to polish things up.  Hopefully the game will turn out to be as good as Joystiq seems to think it looks right now.

Rock Band 2 is already a good deal…

There is a bit more information that’s coming out regarding Rock Band 2 now, and while everything is mostly positive, I guess most people are thinking that it may not be quite as big an update to warrant a “2″.  Instead, 1up, for instance, is wondering why, outside of the obvious instrument improvements, a lot of the new features couldn’t have been released in a title update.

Now, if you’ve been reading our site for awhile, I think you know how often I like to complain about how things are priced.  But I’m just really not sure what the problem is here.  Most Madden games are basically roster updates, yet people continue to shell out $50-$60 every year for them. Regarding Rock Band 2, let me break it down as simply as possible for people:

For $60, you get 70 new songs.

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Men Are From Mars

Multiplayer Blog asks an interesting question: should female characters and male characters be treated differently, if those differences are reflected in real life?  For example, should men be stronger than women?  The responses are interesting but, largely because the readers fail to state the question they’re answering, inconclusive.

To me, this is really three different and related questions:

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Sci-Fi Shooter’s R’ Us

A new rumor popped up regarding Call of Duty 6 (yes, the one after the next one that’s going to take place in both the Pacific and Europe) that states that rather than returning to the “modern combat” of Call of Duty 4, it will instead be transplanted to a futuristic sci-fi setting.

Now, I like sci-fi as much as the next guy, but if there’s one setting we’ve seen more of than World War II, it’s sci-fi.  Not that I think Infinity Ward couldn’t make a great game with a sci-fi setting, but do we really need even more of these? And I’m not even including 3rd-person games or sci-fi set games that don’t use some version of a space marine on my list (yet).

It’s possible that, if the rumor is true, they could go in a more GRAW-like direction and simply use a slightly post-present setting.  This could work fairly well within the “Call of Duty” formula without substantially changing the setting that most gamers found so engrossing in CoD4.  Perhaps a more futuristic setting would also still work, but as a lot of gamers just got their first taste of “Modern Combat”, I wonder whether shifting to something else so quickly will upset them (particularly when they’ve already gotten such a generous filling of WWII shooters).

How much is too much?

With Guitar Hero: Aerosmith coming out in just a few weeks and Guitar Hero IV/World Tour expected later this year, you’d think Activision would be happy with their current Guitar Hero slate for the year.  Apparently not, as Kotaku points out that Guitar Hero: Metallica is slated to hit before the end of Activision’s fiscal year, (by March 31, 2009).

Let’s leave aside, for a moment, whether Guitar Hero: Metallica is a good idea or not.  Does this seem like a bit much to anyone else?  Not only is that going to be 3 Guitar Hero games within a year (4 in roughly 1.5 years), but with Rock Band continuing to offer weekly content, a likely full-fledged Rock Band sequel almost definitely going to be announced sometime soon (no inside info, just a hunch), and even a THIRD Guitar/Band franchise coming from Konami, is anyone worried about over-saturating this market?

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