[Brandon Sheffield was at Nintendo's E3 2008 press briefing, and here looks at the major announcements made and asks - was there anything truly new on show, and if not, does that really matter?]
The Nintendo press conference at E3 2008 opened with a cheesy montage, which felt a bit like a commercial for Lifetime Television, hammering home the idea that all genders, races, and ages love the Wii. The theme for the conference was, "We promise to keep the world smiling…"
The first smiling presenter was Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo's VP of Marketing and Sales, who recounted a tale of difficulty snowboarding, in which she took a fall. "Snowboarding is really a lot harder than it looks. But the fact is I don't like a smile taken off my face for anything. And I really don't like giving up. I decided that as a snowboarder, all I needed was a little help from a friend. A really talented friend. And I think I've found the perfect answer."
The curtain rose to reveal a shoeless Shaun White, red-topped snowboarder extraordinaire, playing the Wii snowboarding game on the Balance Board. Shaun White then partook in the continued cavalcade of scripted banter for the fun-looking Ubisoft-published product, after which Cammie proclaimed: "Now if everyone would welcome me in joining our president... 'Satooroo' Iwata."
Iwata was, as usual, and perhaps by design, the most sensible person to take the stage, claiming that "A big change, actually a big paradigm shift has taken place in the global game market."
The Wii is now a retro console. Let’s get nostalgic about an often maligned system.
Crazy to think the WII is to the Switch 2, as the NES was to the WII back then. 20 Year difference.
My wife asks me to bust it out (heh) everyone once in a while to play bowling and tennis with the kids. There was a ton of slop on it but some good stuff as well.
Wii was great but boy howdy did it cause Microsoft to go on a dark walk with the Kinect and the disastrous XBox One launch that they arguably never recovered from.
Not nostalgic for me.. I was there.. anyone who wasnt a little kid realized it was a gamecube with shit tacked onto it, it was the "joke" system and was well below even the switch in terms of comparing it to the latest machines at the time. The machine was well loved by young people and "casual gamers" who now remember it 20 years on, or in most cases more of its sales came in the 15-20 years ago range not right at launch- but again its not nostalgic for people who were "gamers" then really, just for those who ended up with one in their house, the games , graphics, interface and online features were archaic already in 2006.
New report from Skillsearch found that 22% of those surveyed had been laid off within the past 12 months.
It's a step forward for Stop Killing Games.
ninrendo falls in trash completely
specially after what I heard that is zelda going casuel
nintendo you should't attend e3 you should make your show at disny land
i hated that lady and the pot smoking snowboarder they wouldn't shut up
they ruined e3
Starfox Wii or a new Zelda game would have won the show.
but the truth is that they don't even have to try that hard when both their consoles are crushing the competitions! no matter how lame it is, people will buy it because simply it's Nintendo's! I hate what Ninty have became but they can do what ever makes them happy as long as they don't ruin my gaming on PS3!
it's just like your favorite music band or artist who through popularity lose their 'magic', they bring out a respectable first album and when they get a hit they change. they change because their audience changes.
Thats all nintendo are doing, catering for their new audience.. it seems they have put their original audience low on their priority list. it's business, they produce what sells.