I'm honestly not sure if I'll even get one eventually since I eventually sold my Wii. I even entertained the thought of getting one at launch but it honestly looked to me that Nintendo has no idea what they're doing with this thing.

My jaw was legitimately on the floor after watching that but I honestly can't get behind it. Not after the smoke and mirrors from E3 2005. When I see people actually playing it then I'll start to get excited. Then again Star Wars 1313 looked stellar and that was actually running on playable hardware.

No, and I think the smoke and mirrors is there in Nintendo too... I just think that their underlying creativity pokes its head out in the little things. And I never understood tha disinterest in mini-games. Most collections of them are not fun. I think Nintendo has generally been better than average at releasing fun collections of mini-games. Nintendo Land looks like the heir apparent to the Wii Sports games, and as an early tech demo/multiplayer game for the Wii U, I think it serves just fine.

Where I think the problem comes is that we want Nintendo to take all these little ideas, and put them together in a single big adventure with high production values. I don't think the current landscape that they have decided to work in allows them to do that. The proof is that the last time they did it... was shortly after the GameCube's launch with Pikmin. They keep rolling with new ideas, but they're scattered, and put in familiar boxes. Like I said, it's dillution, but I don't think it's much different than what's happened with the rest of the industry.

See, when you say "what's happened to Nintendo", I think it ignores that the question is probably best asked of all the major publishers. Nintendo sticks out, likely because, rightly or not, seen as the standard bearer for innovation. I think the pressure to continue to rely on existing IPs has affected every company deeply, including Nintendo. It's a fair point, but I think the discussion, if you're going to have it, has to be much, much larger than simply what Nintendo is doing. It has to be about our willingness to continually plunk down cash for mostly the same experiences.

I wouldn't be absolutely shocked if Randolph came about, or even Minda_Cubed, but I think it's more likely that I eat my left sock than ssfreitas showing up, though I'd love to hear from him. Often wondered what happened to that guy.

Oilers99

I actually agree with you 100% and the reason why I criticize Nintendo so heavily. I've ranted about EA, Activision, etc. churning out the same stuff with a fresh coat of paint but, at the end of the day, they aren't the ones trying to sell me new experiences and a new console. Not only that, they aren't companies that have consistently pumped out some of the most groundbreaking titles ever. They're factories that occasionally churn out the exceptional product and they make no bones about it. Even Sony and MS have nver made any explcit gestures to suggest that they want to drive innovation, not like Nintendo does. So it stings a little to see a company that I've held near and dear to my heart for over 20 years, be reduced to what I perceive, as mere parlor tricks. At the end of the day that's what the Wii was and it looks like Wii U is destined to be on the same path.

We're never going to recapture our childhoods. What Nintendo showed to me today is that they are what they've been for the past several years--very much affected by the industry's trend towards inbreeding, but responding differently. Sony says, "look, we've got this brand new game called The Last of Us!" and really, it looks very much like other videogames. It looks like Uncharted. It looks like the industry's trend towards the more mature (which is to say, the more deeply adolescent predisposition with violence and profanity), it looks like many other shooters, it looks like many other post-apocolyptic games. Nintendo comes out, and says, "hey, we have this idea for having a rock-based Pikmin, and this idea of basically completely reversing Pac-Man's design, and for this ninja game, and for having one person work out while the other person watches TV, and we want to have you guys talk to each other through Mario games, and... we're doing this all within previously established franchises". Nintendo actually threw out a lot of ideas that were new, but they were all within familiar confines that they know they can market to more or less the same crowd as before. I think this dillutes the original ideas, frankly. Everyone else? They're just trying to change the superficials, play a smoke and mirror game that tries to trick us into thinking The Last of Us, a supposedly new franchise, isn't the game we've been playing before. Or that we haven't played Halo 4 five times before. Or that Call of Duty: Black Ops II isn't going to be terribly familiar. I'm not trying to defend Nintendo particularly. I guess I prefer how they've responded to the market rewarding rehashes and remakes, sequels numbered dishonestly (how many times have companies started adding numbers to subtitles, so as to make the franchise appear less redundant than it actually is?), and a handful of gameplay archetypes and themes that seem to sell without any abating, than how western developers have. Is their way better? No, but when I go play a Nintendo game, I get to jump over ridiculous enemies, or play in a haunted house that's sillier than scary, or attack things with plant/ant hybrids. That seed of imagination and innovation is there. But the effect of the pressures of the modern market for gaming are there, and if you don't like it, really, the only place you can go is the indie gaming scene.Oilers99

It's not about recapturing childhoods, it's about bringing some ambition back to a once great company.

You say the rest of the industry is playing a smoke and mirrors game but that's pretty much what Nintendo is doing only under the guise of "innovation". Both New Super Mario Bros. games look like carbon copies of what we've been playing. Pikmin 3 didn't look signficantly different at all from Pikmin 2. NintendoLand is full of mini games that I haven't given a sh*t about since their inception. Where the hell are the "A Link To The Past" like masterpieces? Where's the f*cking ambition from this once great company? Watch_Dogs is the singuarly most ambitious title I've seen out of the industry in years and its made by Ubisoft of all people.

Edit: Now all we need is ssfreitas, Randolph, Minda_Cube, and some of others I'm missing, and it'll be a real party!

Watch Dogs looked simply too good to be true. I have a hard time imagining that they can can produce a masterpiece that lives up to this video. This video is just one "mission" but getting get all this to work in an open world game that will be hours long, I personally don't think it's going to be achieveable in 2012. This feels like it's two generations too early to achieve such a thing.

xWoW_Rougex

I tend to agree with this despite desperately not wanting to. All of us have been burned by BS footage but I'll be damned if Watch Dogs isn't the singularly most impressive thing I've seen in the last three years, perhaps all generation really.

[QUOTE="Systems_Id"]

Damn even Pedro is still here, fighting the good fight.

Really does feel like old times.

Edit: Holy crap I just scrolled through the last couple of pages of this thread and it feels like I've been transported to 2003-2005.

dvader654

Haha true but this time I side with Pedro whereas the me of yesterday would of sided with the Nintendo fans. I thought that Nintendo was just being held back by the Wii and that the Wii U would unleash their true creativity but...no. It really does feel like Nintendo, as a company, has run out of ideas and now they're just throwing stuff out there. This isn't the same company that brought us Super Mario World, Metroid, Star Fox, Super Mario 64 and other legendary titles. This is a company content to rest on nostalgia, fanboys, and the fickle casual market until the day comes when that won't be enough.

Damn even Pedro is still here, fighting the good fight.

Really does feel like old times.

Edit: Holy crap I just scrolled through the last couple of pages of this thread and it feels like I've been transported to 2003-2005.

That conference was amazing for all the wrong reasons. What a disaster.

They acknowledged that there was a problem with their shipments, and were supposed to give customers some kind of reward for their patience. What that is, I don't know.

They made an error, and they tried to fix it. That's what a good company does.

King9999

Indeed although I heard this wasn't the first time something like this has happened.

I believe both. If you got the CE then you can just download the characters but if you didn't you obviously have to pay.