Nintendo E3 Press Conference Thoughts

After the internet-killing announcement that closed out Microsoft's press conference yesterday, Nintendo and Sony came into day two of E3 needing something big to steal the show. But Nintendo is in a position right now where they really don't need a "megaton" announcement, and ended up keeping things low key. No new DS, no new character-driven franchises announced, no new Mario, Zelda or Metroid games. However, the focus on casual gaming was front and center, especially with the big announcement.

Wii Games

Wii Music: The big, show-closing Miyamoto announcement was Nintendo's first party music game, which will allow players to simulate playing 50 different instruments using the Wii remote, nunchuck and balance board. Rather than trying to match button inputs to on-screen cues, you basically hold a controller and emulate the movements you would make when playing a real instrument, and the game generates a song. Sounds like Wii Fit, in that it doesn't appear to give you goals (it may not even evaluate your performances, though there is much confusion about this). I can already hear the hardcores screaming about the Wii being "just a toy", but you have to give Miyamoto credit for pushing the casual genre to its extremes. My personal interest in Wii Music entirely hinges on there being some creative input from the user. If it's just Rock Band where any old movements you make are good enough to keep the song going, I would have zero interest. If I can actually use it to make music, then it might be a different story.

Animal Crossing: City Folk: An Animal Crossing title for the Wii was the big non-surprise of Nintendo's event. What is much bigger was the related announcement of Wii Speak, a new peripheral (apparently shipping with the game) which allows in-game communication options like (limited?) voice chat, as well as game-to-cell phone messaging. It will be interesting to see whether they open the online experience up more across the board, or if they're still going to require friend codes for these features. It will be even more interesting to see how this is spun on various news sites. Obviously, it's big news for the Wii, but as the other consoles offered voice chat out of the box (at least in games that supported it), I hope nobody comes out touting this as a huge step forward for gaming in general.

Wii Sports Resort: A new Wii Sports title meant to take advantage of the Wii MotionPlus peripheral (and, of course, the massive success of the original Wii Sports). Includes frisbee and fencing games. Judging by the success of Wii Play, I would assume they plan on bundling the MotionPlus with this and selling a million billion units.

Star Wars: Clone Wars: The long-awaited Wii remote light saber fighting game. I'm sure it will fly off the shelves to Star Wars nerds, but as Red Steel and Dragon Quest Swords have shown, the Wii has a long way to go to get sword fighting right.

Call of Duty World at War: This is a bit more interesting: a Wii-port of an honest to goodness triple A title. Wii remote aiming is naturally included, but I don't see people who have access to the PS3 or 360 versions choosing this one. Nice hardcore gateway drug for casual gamers who only bought a Wii, though (assuming they can make it fun).

Shaun White Snowboarding: I have a feeling we'll see a flood of balance board extreme sports titles in the next year, but outside of Wii Ski (which isn't really extreme sports), looks like this will be the first.

Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party: A party game using the balance board. Not much other info yet, as it's not coming until late 2009.

DS Games

Guitar Hero On Tour Decades: Features song-sharing between games, whatever that means. Very little info otherwise.

GTA: China Town Wars: An all new GTA game set in Liberty City and featuring a "custom game engine", which I assume means touch functionality. I have a feeling this will really give us an idea of what the DS's limits are. Coming this Winter.

Spore Creatures: Sounds like the Creature Creator for the DS, with the ability to share creatures over Wi-Fi. Again, very little info otherwise.

Pokemon Rangers: Shadows of Almia: No info given outside of the title, but it's Pokemon, so even if they don't ever tell us what the game is, it will still sell millions.

Non-Game Software

It was announced that Nintendo is working on applications that will allow the DS to do some useful things for travelers, such as displaying flight information (and maybe even the location of one's luggage!), restaurant guides and more. Cool if they can get it working.

Cooking Navi: This formerly Japan-only title is now coming to the US. It's basically a cookbook (featuring around 200 recipes) with various search options. Should do pretty well, especially with the ever-widening audience for the DS.

Hardware

Wii Motion Plus: Finally, there's Nintendo's newest peripheral, a small dongle that plugs into the Wii remote's nunchuck slot and vastly improves the precision of the remote's motion tracking. As mentioned above, it was demoed with Wii Sports Resort, and I'm willing to be there will be a bundle.

And that's it. Lots of graphs and talk about how Nintendo is outselling everyone at everything all the time. Obviously, the company's focus is more and more on casual and inclusive gaming, which is obviously a very successful business model, but one I find interests me less and less as far as the products they're really pushing. However, I'm left wondering if Nintendo is waiting to bring out their big guns at Tokyo Game Show.