E3 2008 Coverage - Nintendo Media Brief
Day two of the Electronic Entertainment Expo and this time it’s Nintendo’s turn to show off a few of the tricks they have hidden up their sleeves. Bear with me as we go through their presser in as much detail as I can type while watching.
0900 PST: Before anyone comes on stage, Nintendo have started their presser with images of happy-looking people from all ethnicities and ages playing various Nintendo consoles - I saw the DS, Wiimote and Wii Wheel in there somewhere. There is also a lot of blue light, perhaps to evoke the Wii’s flashing blue light whenever you get a message? Additionally, there’s funky music playing in the background but I’m not quite sure what that’s trying to say.
0906: The music changes and yet more people of different backgrounds, social groups, etc are shown. Alright Nintendo, we get it - you appeal to the masses. Get on with your presser!
0907: Exec VP Cammie Dunaway takes to the stage, with a picture of her Mii behind her. First sentence: “As you can see, my name is not Reggie.” That’s nice to know; now get off the stage and bring on Reggielution! She’s very annoying. “How great is it to work for a video games company … I can’t stop smiling!” Maybe it’s because she’s so relieved to have left Yahoo!. And she doesn’t like a smile taken off her face for anything. She tells some story about going snowboarding and falling over and how much that sucked, so she found a friend to help her.
0910: Cue curtain rise with ‘Shaun White Snowboarding’. Some long-haired guy who I assume is Shaun White is standing on one of two Wii Boards and demonstrates the game with jumps and all. His avatar falls down. He is actually Shaun White, an Olympic gold medallist. He says the board enhances the gameplay - he moves forward, it moves forward; he swerves, it swerves.
0912: Cammie has a go. She doesn’t seem to be smiling as much during it. She doesn’t completely fail though. Anyway it arrives exclusively for Wii by the year’s end. I assume that’s for North America only.
0914: Nintendo president Satoru Iwata comes on. His Mii has huuuuge glasses and looks a little grumpy. He says a shift has taken place in the gaming market. He says five years ago, everyone held a pessimistic view about Nintendo’s future. He says no Nintendo employees would have guessed they’d sell so many millions of bathroom scales (Wii Boards) around the world. Haaa. He says now they’re selling games that will sell for a looooong period of time, like Nintendogs and Brain Age. He says there will be more Mario and Zelda games, but says the market has opened to those who never considered video games before.
0918: A console is for life, not just for Christmas, intones Iwata, or something along those lines. Guitar Hero 3’s Wii version is apparently outselling the other platform versions. What can we expect next? People will get tired of new things because everyone will try to repeat other people’s past successes. There must be more ways for gamers to be engaged.
0922: First surprise…. Video of Katsuya Eguchi, creator of Animal Crossing… Animal Crossing: City Folk comes to Wii this year. No required goals, people can do things their own way. Feels like real-time. Even when you’re not playing, the animals still wake up and go to bed. Creepy. You can now explore a city, with an auction site and can buy or sell stuff. You can find out what other players are up to at the academy. You can visit a fashion designer. You can change your hairstyle or wear a mask and look like your Mii. You can write letters and send pictures to friends on their Wiis but also on their computers and cellphones.
Aagh! New Wiiware - WiiSpeak, a microphone for your Wii. A community microphone that lets a room of players speak with a room of players somewhere else in the world. You can chat while you play. You can go and spy on other people’s towns and find out what kind of people they are. You can make new friends with Nintendo… in case you’re incapable of talking to people irl.
0928: Reggie time! 10 million sales of Wiis in the US. 20 mil for DSes. Nintendo want to fill the needs of new and experienced gamers. He goes on about market results and strategies… look this up if you’re interested but I’m gonna skip it for sake of brevity and to give my fingertips a quick break. To sum it up, Nintendo has sold lots of stuff. They rule, apparently!
Hahah they started targeting females with celebrities like Nicole Kidman and suddenly the market doubled. As a girl, that advert has little to no effect on me. But then I guess I’m a “veteran gamer” so I don’t fit their target audience.
Bla bla bla, dozens of titles coming in the next few months. Preview is limited to three new games.
0936: First one - Star Wars: Clone Wars. You can use your Wiimote as a lightsaber. Hope it turns out better than Red Steel’s sword-wielding Wiimote. Out Holiday 2008. Second one - Raving Rabbids TV Party. Oh cool, there’s a video with a kid playing a motorcycle game using the Wiimote, nunchuck and sitting on the Wii Board to move around. Also you can surf through space on an ironing board. Obviously there’s a snowboarding game… though you (as a rabbid) are snowboarding on a moose. Looks much more fun than that earlier snowboarding game! Out Fall (autumn) 2008. Game three - Call of Duty: World at War. Lots of shooting. People using the Wii Zapper to shoot. Two can play that game. The gamers look tense. “Look behind you Molenski (sp?)!” the game shouts. Yes, look behind you at that girl who’s watching you guys play. She’s gonna knock you out with the Wii Board for leaving her out. No date, just “Coming Soon”.
0938: Cammie comes up for portable games. She shows us some figures on how females are buying more DSes. A game called Guitar Hero: On Tour Decades is on the way. And Will Wright’s Spore is coming out exclusively for the DS. You can share your songs with each other for Guitar Hero On Tour. They made a pick (a sort of plectrum used for strumming guitar strings) stylus and there’s some button pressing thing as well. Spore is good for the DS because you can use the stylus to drag parts over to your creature, says Spore lady. You can share creatures and they will appear in your zoo. Spore lady does a plug for how great the DS is.
0943: Cammie: I can add one more launch news to that list - the next invasion of Pokemon.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Stop flogging that dead horse already! Pokemon Ranger: Shadow of Alnia. Nov 10th in US.
Um wow. They have one more announcement: a custom version of Grand Theft Auto (choke) Chinatown Wars (/choke) arrives on DS this winter. Modern New Yo… I mean Liberty City, new characters, same freeranging gameplay. No video trailer. Boo.
0944: DS and air travel come together! You can now use the DS to control the plane! Don’t like the bratty kid sitting behind you? Blast him with the air conditioning! Feel like giving the lady in front of you a nervous breakdown? Make her oxygen mask drop down from the ceiling! Think the pilot is driving too slowly? Divert control to your DS and speed through airspace like a mad mofo! … I jest. They’re doing something so that your DS can tell you where to collect your luggage, find a nearby Mexican restaurant and an ATM, etc etc when you land. Still being tested… to incorporate those other things I mentioned! Muahahahaha!
And you can now check the scores of other live baseball games while you are watching a game. Umm okay, so you pay money for a ticket to see a game, then you spend the whole game finding out what’s going on elsewhere? You can probably even find out the score of the game you’re at - there’s no need to go through the painstaking effort of raising your head, thanks to the power of Nintendo!
Speaking of food, here’s another idea. Can the DS earn a spot in your kitchen? Surely it already does through Cooking Guide: Can’t Decide What to Eat? Well, there’s another new one, calling Cooking Navi, which sounds exactly the same as the former, coming November this year.
0946: Reggie comes back. They’re redefining the Wiimote with something that looks like a GIANT adaptor. Thanks but I’d rather keep my batteries. Oh they shrink it. Now it just looks like the balls for the peni… Wiimote. It’s called Wii Motion Plus and detects motion more sensitively. Ooooh, they’re going to demonstrate its power with the sequel to Wii Sports - Wii Sports Resort, a day at the beach. They’re gonna include the Wiimote add-on with every Wii Sports Resort game.
Cammie comes back to demonstrate one of the games: Disc Dog. They demonstrate the powers of the add-on, the Mii moves its wrist exactly as Cami moves hers, twisting, turning, upside down, the whole shebang. She ‘throws’ the frisbee. The dog misses. She tries again, the dog catches it. Applause all round for the dog.
Reggie shows us a game that’s more “his speed”. Jet-ski racing! Reggie does well then misses one. They make jokes about how men like things that are more powerful and Cammie likes the goggie game because it’s cute and guyrlsh love cuteshy wootshey things.
Third guy, whose name I didn’t catch, shows us another game: chopping stuff with a sword. Reggie and Cammie duel. Reggie wins and Cammie falls into the water. Cammie wins round two. Cammie and NoName leave the stage. Reggie says there are other games coming for Wii Sports Resort as well that they’ve not shown yet.
0953: Other developers will also get to have a go with making exciting games using the wiimote balls. Wii sports resort launches globally next spring. Reggie thinks there will be a lot more smiling faces, like the ones in the intro video. However, before that, Reggie wants to get everyone smiling in a whole new way. The stage goes black.
0955: Smoke appears, with white lights and some techno-rock music. We see someone sitting there with the Wiimote and nunchuck. He moves them. A game image of drums responds. The Wii Board is at his feet and the pedal responds when he taps it. He plays a lot of cymbals. Does he mean to hit the drumskins and miss, because he’s doing it an awful lot? Drum guy ends on a crescendo of cymbaling then bows like a rock star.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH IT’S SHIGERU MIYAMOTO! And he’s here to introduce Wii Music. He plays the sax. A mean sax. Well, as mean as you can with the Wiimote. Drum guy plays backup in the background. Miyamoto is wearing a Mario t-shirt.
0957: “Herrow,” says Miyamoto. “This year I would like to introduce you to Wii Music.” That’s all the English he can manage and NoName guy comes back to translate. Miyamoto looks like he is smiling more than all the people in the video at the beginning combined. They began developing Wii Music with all the Wii-series games, as it’s something everyone in the living room can enjoy playing. It’s different from all other music games, where you pressed buttons in time with something on screen. However, everyone, who can’t read music or play instruments, can enjoy playing Wii Music. There’s no need to follow rhythm guides when playing the game, all you have to do is move with the Wiimote and the Wii will play a note that matches the song. You can’t mess up! Miyamoto can’t play the sax, but he can press buttons on the Wiimote. He plays a tune from F Zero. Also, you can play the piano, violin, guitar, taiko (Japanese sideways) drum and other percussion. The drummer guy from earlier is a professional drummer, whose name, if I heard this right, is Ravi Drums. Wow, talk about following your name. Drum man was playing a different mode, which also includes lessons so you can learn to play the drum in real life without ever touching a real drum kit.
1003: Miyamoto remembers the time when he conducted an orchestra. He says that people on the internet said it was pretty bad. An orchestra game is included with Wii Music, as well as note-matching games. The game doesn’t evaluate your performance but records it. You can make your own music video by playing all the instruments separately then combining them together. However, they’re gonna play a song with everyone together. Up to 4 players but there are six instruments at one time. VP corporate affairs US Denise K-something comes along, with some other Nintendo people. Miyamoto plays the cowbell. Oh cute, they play the Mario theme tune. Other instruments I see include trumpets and a glockenspiel/xylophone. This is too adorable. Miyamoto does a cowbell solo and then they wrap it up with a big jump. Ravi Drums nods his head to the music as he walks off stage.
1007: Reggie and Cammie come back. They do a roundup of everything they’ve discussed. “Nintendo simply brings more smiles to more faces.” Baaarf. Reggie disses people for trying to copy the Wii. Nintendo are aiming for the next advantage, in look and in feel. Thanks for listening, says Reggie.
Well, that was E3 Nintendo. Thanks for bearing with me and look out for highlights of the conference coming soon on Shinohan’s Youtube page!
