Just a couple of weeks now folks. Soon, the world will finally know what Nintendo has locked up in their R&D vaults in Japan. In two short weeks, Nintendo’s game plan for the remainder of 2011 will be revealed. How do you think Nintendo will fair?
Nintendo has come under much scrutiny lately by members of the press and fans alike. Personally, I am expecting Nintendo to hit the ball out of the park at e3 this year. If Nintendo fails to deliver, I think their 2011 forecasted profits will fall short of estimates.
Nintendo has found itself in an interesting position in the console and handheld race by showing its hand first. Can Project Café fails to capture the attention that Wii was able to? Will the “blue ocean” customers Nintendo gained with Wii and DS return to the stores looking for Project Café and 3DS? Who knows! We will have a better idea June 7th and 9am, so be sure to tune in to Infendo for the latest!
What do you think? How do you feel about Nintendo at the moment? Do you like the direction the company has taken as of late?
They're still my favorite game company. I've thoroughly enjoyed Wii and DS, and now I really love 3DS as a platform; it's got an unbelievable amount of potential. I cannot wait to see what they unveil at E3.
Their biggest threat right now is the App Store, and their biggest strengths are their talent and unparalleled catalog of game characters and franchises. If they continue to deliver deep, captivating software, they'll be fine.
June 7th can't come soon enough!
I'm more than happy with my wii, lately I have been going backwards and playing gamecube games. I love how the wii still supports the gamecube controller till this day.
I am excited for E3 2011, but at the same time I am scared, what if it turns out like E3 2008?
What if they don't show project cafe or anything?
I have been checking infendo and other gaming sites religiously the past few days. Because the wii's name and the 3DS were all announced weeks before E3. I am sure it will happen with project cafes name.
But if it doesn't then that will be really cool to see the entire console as a whole in one showing.
But since we haven't heard much I am still scared.
Direction? Which direction?
Nintendo 3DS still seems like a Nintendo console. Though I suppose it's a different approach to gaming, it isn't at all a different tactic when considering Nintendo's philosophy towards gaming.
If we're talking about the upcoming console, it's too soon to say. I haven't seen anything about it other than ridiculous rumors. One could be right. Two could be right. Maybe three, four, or five of them could be right. But in the words of PA: "they can't all be true at the same time!"
Nintendo's the same Nintendo to me as it has been since before I was even a fan.
They may move forward in new directions, but their way of handling things is always the same.
I'm looking forward to E3.
Also as a side-note…
Is it just me or is almost every known gaming review/news site semi-bashing and semi-cautious about Nintendo? Either that or spilling absolutely ludicrous rumors for readers to view?
My question is: Is this all because Nintendo IS being a little unpredictable as of late (which they always tend to be before they reveal something big in E3)? Or is Nintendo paying these sites to be extremely skeptical in order for E3 to become a huge shocker to certain audiences?
Obviously my latter explanation is a bit far-fetched, but it'd be a brilliant tactic.
Since the Wii's graphics are only a small notch above Gamecube's, we've grown accustom to playing Nintendo's games on nearly ten year old hardware. I think Nintendo fans will have their jaws shoot straight to the floor when we witness the gigantic leap forward into Project Cafe's powerful, beautiful, leader-of-the-pack HD graphics. And we get to live in a world where Nintendo's console is the most powerful for the next few years. It's going to be a beautiful thing to be back on top!
I'm really not enjoying Nintendo's recent direction. At the beginning of this generation, Wii promised all kinds of new games and fun. I've loved the Wii Series games, the return of 2D Mario on the home system (as well as the other platformers), cool motion games like Red Steel 2 and Just Dance 2, the arcade shooters and racers that were released on the system, etc. Then Nintendo just stopped putting out significant motion games on Wii and stopped making really neat proposals like Wii Sports and Wii Fit had been. Where are the M+ games? Zelda is great, but what about Star Fox or anything else? I don't understand why a demo of M+'s capabilities is being released at this stage now that they've decided to release a new home console. The Wii isn't done yet. There are so many Wii owners looking for great games, and the surface has only just been scratched.
Meanwhile, I don't enjoy the direction of 3DS. I bought one on launch day, and although I've loved games like PilotWings and Street Fighter, I can't help but feel that things are going bad and fast. What you see and hear about the philosophy of a system really helps you see where it's going in the next few years, and I'm just not digging it. 3D is a nice visual effect, but I can't honestly say it's something I can live without. I see it adding expense in hard financial times and hurting core functions like battery life while simultaneously not drawing new players in. The DS was great for its new input methods and its ability to play all sorts of different games. I think the expectation with 3DS is to obviously have 3D games, and I'm afraid that's going to significantly impact the software lineup on the machine. So far it seems to be suffering from what the PSP suffered from at launch, that being the presence of what were essentially home console games plopped on a handheld. I also find it silly that Nintendo believes that AR Games and Face Raiders are going to convert people to the machine. Face Raiders is fun, but AR Games feels like a shoddy tech demo with little to no replay value.
These technology tricks don't seem to be doing Nintendo any favors. What happened to making games for everyone? 🙁
The 3DS's screen is no "technology trick". I find that it seriously improves my spatial awareness, and a scene's believability. I honestly never want to go back to 2D again, 3D is a major fundamental improvement.
As for the Wii, there may be untapped potential with WiiMotion+, but its five years are up. That's the length of time most Nintendo consoles get to live, and the falling sales have shown that it's time to move on, right on schedule. Plus, now that all the other consoles have their own motion control schemes, the Wii's lack of HD graphics is more notable.
At E3 we will probably see a big focus on Project Cafe, since it is rumored to launch in 6 – 12 months. We may currently be in the pre-E3 drought, but once we see what Nintendo has in store for the coming year, I have a feeling we will all be very happy.
Nintendo are pretty much in a damned if you do, damned if you don't kind of situation. 3rd parties worry that only Nintendo's 1st party games sell on Nintendo systems. Which of course they do because generally they are much better games than what 3rd parties offer up. The sad part is some genuinely good 3rd party games go unnoticed. So Nintendo hold back games on 3DS to let the 3rd parties shine and now we have a drought already on top of the Wii drought. I really have no answers. I'd like them to not worry so much on what 3rd parties do and start giving us the games we want, like fzero and pikmin etc, but its a sure fire way of losing business and not profiting which would lead to the eventual downfall of Nintendo. I definately don't want that.
This is gonna sound odd to most of you, but I am really dreading the whole HD thing.
See, I'm evidently one of the only people left on the planet without an HD tv. This means not much in terms of graphics, but Tue text will appear incredibly small on my tv, as a PS3 or 360 would.
The difference is that Nintendo's characters don't talk. So I'll have to kill my eyes squinting to get a hint about a dungeon.
Stupid rich people and your thousand-dollar tv sets….
Still have 25+ Wii games in my drawer waiting for their turn. I've just finished Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings and have played half of the included bonus game (Fate of Atlantis). Before that I finished Goldeneye 007 (great remake) and will soon start The Munchables (track it down!).
On the DS I've got about 20 games waiting for me (currently playing Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story and before that I did Kingdom Hearts Re: Coded) which is why I haven't gotten a 3DS just yet.
Am I excited about Project Cafe and the second wave of 3DS titles? Yeeeeeeeep. Am I out of games for the current gen? No, not at all.
i am very happy with nintendo. more happy with them than sony or microsoft. love my 3ds cant wait for more games to play and download and there are some bad ass wii games on the horizon
Monkat,
You can pick up an HDTV under $200 these days.
I don't like the direction the handheld has taken. Nintendo seems oblivious to the things the iPhone has ushered in for portable gaming.
I do like the direction the console seems to be taking. Finally something with decent power, I hope it is at least a little more powerful than a 360, and allegedly the online networking is better.
right now nintendo is #3 to me- PC, MS, Big N, Sony. Sony lost me with its terrible internet. MS has terrible hardware, but the results when it works are just outstanding. A quality reliable network is another plus to an fps fan like me. Nintendo has ignored my interests for the last 2 generations. PC is as reliable as ever though.
Ok, I don't like commenting often (seems to feed unneccesary fires) but I do find it interesting how pessimistic the general blogosphere (even in Ninny loyalist circles) have become.
My take: Someone said it in a post a while back, but this industry is a rollercoaster. We've seen Nintendo hit hard times with the cube, but those hard times taught them lessons that in my opinion really paid off. The DS and Wii have been like a golden age for a lot of my favorite nintendo titles (Galaxy games, Twilight Princess is still great, and the re-surgence of 2D platforming was well over due.) Companies have to adjust, and Nintendo will. Maybe this generation wont be the apocalyptic domination that took place with the DS and Wii, but like the gamecube, Nintendo fans will still have plenty of gems to pick over until Iwata and crew rise to power again. Now I just spelled out a bleak scenario, but I'm only talking worst-case, and I really don't think Cafe will bomb. I think that if even half the Wii market base upgrades to it, Cafe will be fine.
3DS: Ok, this has to stop. I too am dissapointed I had to pay Nintendo 250 for a portable, yes it smacks of Sony's techno macho display (which proved a failing strategy…) but it's a perfectly good system, and a very legitimate evolution of the DS franchise. But really, the criticism I've heard from IGN and other big gaming sites leads me to believe that gamers apparetnly have zero short term memory. No one thought the DS would fare well. I can't remember how many people on line declared the DS the stupidest thing Nintendo did, or how many prophecies I read through about the amazing PSP. It took people time to see the advantages to the hardware, and once they did the DS became one of gamings biggest success stories and broke gaming into the mainstream in a way I never saw the Gameboy achieve. 3DS will take time. I've played two games, and I have to say (strangely enough if you've seen the reviews) Rayman 3D has sold me on 3D gaming. Platforming and action games will NEVER want to look back to the stale and ineffective 2D backdrops. What we need is a Nintendogs for the 3DS. A new title that fully incorporates and demonstrates what the 3DS does, while engaging people. This system will be more than fine this time next year once the library fills out. Again, the DS was ripped to shreds for it's less than fantastic opening library.
So please people, it's ok to be critical, we need to be so that our beloved company doesn't turn into another MS or SONY (sophomoric, bully tactics, and a clear emphasis on graphics over gameplay and innovation….pass on that) but this 'rapture-like' doomsday forecasting is silly and unjustified. Hopefully were all on this site becayse we love Ninny and it's products. They've earned our faith, at least they've earned mine!