Nintendo
Nintendo’s conference kicked off with Pikmin 3. The long-awaited reveal of a game that people have been anticipating for ages, stuffed Pikmin, Miyamoto acting totally goofy, and all in glorious HD graphics – if this was what they were starting the conference with, we couldn’t imagine what magic the big N would work over the next hour. It could be E3 2010 all over again.
And then the bottom fell out. Reggie came out and stated that they would be concentrating solely on games at the conference, then promptly started touting the social networking features of Wii U, including a bunch of entertainment services that are already out on other consoles. Then we got New Super Mario Bros. U, which looks almost exactly like it did when it came out on DS years ago – oh wait, this has social networking features. And then Batman: Arkham City – didn’t this come out on PS3 and 360 last year? And without gimmicky Wii U controls?
After a demo of Scribblenauts Unlimited and a fairly lackluster third-party reel, Nintendo decided to abandon any pretense of reaching out to core gamers and went back to their old casual ways – Wii Fit U and Sing. They glanced over three first-party 3DS games, promising much more info at the Software Showcase on Wednesday night (more on that debacle later), then showed a surprisingly impressive trailer of Lego City Undercover, which looks like GTA with Legos. Then Ubisoft came on stage to show off their Wii U offerings, which ran the gamut from mildly impressive (ZombiU) to ugh (more Rabbids).
Okay, it was time for the conference to wrap up. After such a depressing showing, Nintendo had to have a megaton to redeem themselves, right? Cue NintendoLand…a generic-looking minigame collection based on Nintendo franchises. An excruciatingly long presentation from Katsuya Eguchi bored everyone to tears, and the actual gameplay footage was very uninspiring. This is the title Nintendo is betting on being the Wii Sports for Wii U, but unlike Wii Sports, it almost universally fell flat as soon as it was revealed.
It would be remiss to talk about Nintendo without mentioning the 3DS Software Showcase, which took place Wednesday night. During this waste of an hour, we got no new game announcements, no release dates, and hardly any new gameplay footage…and what footage we got killed any hype we at 4P had for the games that were shown. The prime offender was Paper Mario: Sticker Star, which relies on stickers to do anything – even basic battle commands such as jumping on enemies. These stickers are one-use and are scattered all over the environment. But wait, it gets better – you don’t even get anything for battling! EXP is gained by helping out random Toads and other NPCs and doing sidequests, so we have to ask, why even bother battling?
Summary: This was Nintendo’s big chance to sell the Wii U to a skeptical audience. The Nintendo Direct hardware presentation was very promising, and made us think Nintendo was finally reaching out to the core audience. Then the conference served as a big slap in the face, amounting to “We love you, core gamers! Now here’s a bunch of ports, fitness games, and minigame collections, and you’d better damn well like it!” Even Reggie seemed indifferent about the whole thing. We came out of E3 2010 in awe, having seen a whole slew of new games and wanting to get our hands on a 3DS right then. E3 2012 did the exact opposite – it showed us that Nintendo really isn’t interested in fixing their Wii mistakes and is quite content repeating them for Wii U – unfortunately, unless the price is right, we can’t see it being as much of a success.
Final Grade: D-
The Final Verdict
Let’s be frank, E3 this year sucked. Out of the Big Three, the only one that had an even slightly impressive showing was Sony. Though their Wonderbook presentation killed all the momentum of the conference, they still had a solid lineup of games and a good presentation. Microsoft is still trying to push the 360 as a full entertainment center and Kinect machine, and Nintendo is…somewhere out there, we don’t know where.
But when it all comes down to it, there was one shining star in the whole show. Ubisoft showed nothing but games, with impressive footage and demos, and an incredible variety of genres – there was something for everyone. The reveal of show-stopper Watch Dogs only sealed the deal, and we can’t wait to hear more about it. While there were a few missteps, such as the awkward hosting, Ubi seems to be the only company that realizes that E3 is a gaming show. They’re proving themselves to be one of the best developers/publishers in the industry, no one really expected them to have such a strong showing, and therefore we’re proud to declare Ubisoft the surprise winner of E3 2012.
The Winner: Ubisoft