Seriously, what WAS that?  That was the lamest E3 conference I think they've ever given... and I was even kind of intrigued by Pac-Man Vs. when they did that one!

I mean, I'm kind of excited about Animal Crossing because it's an insane addiction I have and the social aspect will be cool.  Fencing might also be pretty fun in the new Wii Sports.  But outside that?  Anything?  Any new games?  *cue cricket sounds*  They didn't even talk about localizations of games I'm hoping for in the fall... where's Disaster?  Where's Fatal Frame 4?  Soma Bringer?  Ughghghgh.

Sony may be smartin' from that Microsoft FFXIII announcement yesterday, but it won't take much to beat the Nintendo conference.

I missed it. What were the highlights (or lowlights)?

Nintendo has no one to impress... and apparently this show demonstrated only that Nintendo has no interest in building more hype.  They are, however, attempting to proselytize and boast about their philosophical success.  I notice they showed off NOTHING on the fall quarter games (like Wario Shake Land or whatever it is called, or Kirby Superstar remake), and the holiday games remain clouded in mystery, which makes me think Nintendo is either going to show them off at the show without the hoopla OR they have some other event planned.

Or... they had very little to show. I hope that's not the case though.

I thought it was pretty awesome.  Better than the boring montages of games that were already released last year.  Animal Crossing and Wii Sports Resort sound pretty awesome.  Also, pretty impressive demonstration for Wii Music.

EDIT:  Oh yeah, and voice chat for online games.  FINALLY.  Just need a damn storage space solution now.

I got the feeling that they were neglecting more traditional games like Wario to show off all the casual games. It felt like they know that those interested in games like Wario would search the internet but the casual market would only pay more attention to the conference.

I was really expecting them to show a whole lot of new characteristic nintendo games like Zelda.For me what made it all better was the incredible line up SEGA had such as Sonic Unleashed and Samba De Amigo.

I guess Nintendo's just coasting through this holiday season.  Here are the DS and Wii release lists, with release dates:

http://www.nintendowiifanboy.com/photos … st/922713/
http://www.dsfanboy.com/photos/e3-relea … -1/923337/

Huh, so anyone find a lot of games listed they'll get?

Agreed that this press conference was pretty awful.  Wii Sports Resort and Wii Music both seem flawed at a conceptual level and the lack of any "real" games shown for Wii is a slap in the face to a market segment that - though not the one written about in endless Wii news reports - is still in some part responsible for their current success.

Surely they must have something unannounced on the way for the holiday season.

Disaster has been delayed indefinitely in all regions, so don't expect that one anytime soon.  As for the others, Fatal Frame 4 is almost guaranteed to come here, and though you didn't list it, rumors suggest ASH will be coming here as well.  I have no idea about Soma Bringer.  Note that they also didn't announce Professor Layton 2 for a Q4 release which is widely expected.  My guess is that these sorts of announcements will trickle in as we get closer, and many of them may become Q109 titles for the U.S. when there's less third party stuff around.

I thought all three conferences were pretty sad. Sure, there is the FFXIII news that has fanboys screaming in agony all over the internet but aside from that, this is an oddly impoverished gaming generation.

The holiday games are Animal Crossing and Wii Music.  AC is due out 11/16.  No word if AC is the "hardcore" game that Reggie promised or if that title is still yet to be revealed.

So I watched Nintendo's conference.  As a gamer, there's basically nothing of interest here and from that perspective, Nintendo's conference kind of sucked.  As an industry watcher, however, Iwata's speech was damn brilliant.  This man really knows his stuff, and his having this job is another credit to Yamauchi's incredible eye for talent.

Cammie and Reggie did ok, but it's a little too clear that Cammie has been giving business presentations her whole career and her by the books body language started to get boring.  But at least she was comfortable up there, which is more than I can say for MSFT's Don Mattrick.  I'm looking forward to seeing how Jack Tretton performed for Sony, but I don't have time to watch that one tonight, so I'll catch the replay tomorrow.

As for the few games that they did show, I'm hugely disappointed with Animal Crossing.  It's the same thing AGAIN.  Is it too much to ask them to grow this series a bit?  Even Mario Kart games change more between iterations than this series.  Can't they at least remix the art style?  Geez.

Wii Sports Resort looks very dull to me, but I'm sure it'll give the casual target another fun pick up and play title.  The WiiMotionPlus accessory is neat, though, as I mentioned in another thread, I still don't get why they revealed the accessory so soon -- didn't really seem necessary and only serves to highlight the relative imprecision of the existing technology.

Wii Music is more of an x factor, I think.  There seems to be very little "game" in it and it echoes Boogie in the seeming lack of any challenge.  I imagine it could be fun in short bursts in a group setting, but I think they're riding a very fine line in terms of not giving the player enough control.  If the player can't screw up, there's no satisfaction in doing well, so the success of this will depend on just how much control you actually have, and that remains to be seen.

Yeah, this year was pretty blehh the more I read up on it. Why should all the interesting stuff for the rest of the year solely be either remakes or retro-styled? I feel old.

I figured there were probably a load of Nintendo games that they just didn't hype up at the conference. I was right. Check out this list of shovelware -

http://uk.wii.ign.com/articles/889/889814p1.html

But now we have Dead Rising for the Wii so things just got much more interesting. Can it recreate the game's biggest strength though - the sheer amount of zombies?

Penny Arcade's take on all three panels.  Spot-on:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2008/20080716.jpg

Just because Nintendo didn't highlight any core games during the press conference doesn't mean what we already know about has disappeared into thin air. We know for a fact that Fatal Frame IV, Arc Rise Fantasia, Rune Factory, Dead Rising, The Conduit, Call of Duty: WaW, Deadly Creatures, Little Kings Story, Fragile, Oboru Muramasa, Tales of Symphonia: DotNW, Tenchu IV, another "mothership" Tales game, Monster Hunter 3, etc. are coming very soon. From a mass market standpoint, Wii Sports 2 is HUGE, so is Animal Crossing and the fact that we finally get voice chat. It's games like Wii Sports, Wii Play, Wii Fit, and Wii Music that will have the Wii selling at or over 600k units each month in NPDs - not the aforementioned core games. The core/hardcore gaming niche is SMALL compared to the mass-market consumer... ever seen Sony and Microsoft's financial earnings for their game divisions?

- Microsoft's H&E division: approximately $2.5 billion in losses since launch of the 360.

- Sony's gaming division: approximately $3 billion in losses since launch of the PS3.

You have to cater to the expanded market nowadays, so gaming is becoming less and less about just us.  From my standpoint of being a core gamer, yes, Nintendo's conference was lackluster.  From a mass-market consumer's standpoint, it was awesome.  But core Wii gamers have plenty to be excited about.  Nintendo was right to focus on the mass market in their presentation.

Edited for clarity...

I guess I'm just someone who doesn't care a damn how much money they make. Sales does not equal quality and certainly comparing them to the sales of other consoles doesn't mean a thing to me. I just want good games. You know, like, actual games.

The sheer volume of complete cack slated for release is quite overwhelming. I'll be curious to see what they can do with Dead Rising, though with a bit of healthy skepticism, and Wario looks absolutely superb. I'll also be curious about Lost in Blue for the Wii but the DS games never really developed and, though I still think there is loads of potential in that series, I'm not sure Konami want to realise that potential and the reports so far seem to suggest I'm right with that. I kind of wish that series would go to a different developer because it could be fantastic.

No positive words on Earthbound is disappointing too. There's a series that got shafted.

As thrilled as I am that the game is coming outside of the 360, I'm wondering the same thing.  Is it really a good idea porting over a game that's running on such powerful hardware to a system that boasts far less so?

I wonder about that new DS GTA, too.....

Nobody cares about how much Ninty makes.  I'm just sayin', try to view their presentation within the broader context of the state of the videogame industry.   Installed base is the reason why developers support a system... Wada openly admitted that this is why FFXIII is being released on the XB360 for example.  With those Wii numbers, the games are certainly going to come.

And to reiterate my main point, the "good games. You know, like, actual games" are coming and many have already been announced.  Just because Nintendo didn't focus on those titles specifically doesn't mean they've all been canceled or something... that's all I'm saying.

Nintendo's set to have a secret press conference today a 3p PST.  Rumor is that it's a game unveiling, but don't get your hopes up.

Yeah, but this was a NINTENDO conference.  Out of all the games you've listed there, only one of them is first-party published (Fatal Frame IV), and even that is outsourced to Grasshopper for development.  I was kind of hoping for a bit more first party stuff... Nintendo has quite a few software teams who haven't had anything to show for quite some time.  I was kind of hoping for a little more than a terrible looking music game, a brief glimpse at a Wii Sports sequel that likely won't materialize forever, and a new Animal Crossing game that three entries later still looks barely evolved from the N64 original.  I can't believe how badly it seems they've killed their momentum after coming off of Prime 3, Galaxy, Brawl, and Mario Kart.

The buzz has been that Kid Icarus is certain.  Maybe they'll announce that today.

Those games were listed in reference to a CORE game vs. CASUAL/NON-game discussion in response to Adam... not 1st party vs. 3rd party - that had nothing to do with the discussion.

I think we all were.

^ Probably because they are trying to let 3rd parties shine now?  3rd party sales, much like Nintendo sales, aren't really that important to gamers directly, but indirectly both are pivotal.

The sad thing is I'll probably get that Wii Music game, though one good thing keeping me from it is that I don't have Wii Fit, and it uses the balance board.  The Wii Sports Resort game is not due until spring of next year, but I'll probably pick it up too.  Would be nice if they'd have slot in its case (assuming it comes with a case) to store the original Wii Sports.

http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/07/nin … cammi.html
http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/07/nin … ere-s.html

Is bias coloring my perception, or is Nintendo's response to the fallout from E3 basically, "We're totally working on stuff 'n' things for core gamers.  Ask us again later.  Much later."  If I were bemoaning the lack of attention to core Wii gamers, I would not find the above to be such a satisfactory answer.

I guess it goes along with their current strategy, which seems to be "HEY GUYS, NEW GAME!  Release date?  Tomorrow!!!!  Surprise!"  I would say that Brawl's sales should show that hyping a game pre-release leads to great sales, but Mario Kart was kept pretty tight under wraps until right before release, and that is selling incredibly well too.  Blah.  I want to know what to look forward to!

What's especially funny is how Cammie is trying to make it sound like revealing things at the last minute is the way Nintendo has always done things.  It might be the way Nintendo's always done things since she's been working there (read: not long), but I remember seeing video footage of Twilight Princess in 2004, and that's just a recent example.  The truth is that now that Nintendo is top dog, it doesn't have to show stuff early to get people excited.  Notice that Sony, big number three in the U.S., was the company that had no problem showing plenty of 2009 products.