Nintendo started the part early with a half hour videofound here. It focuses mostly on the peripherals* and social gaming** of Wii U. Their main presentation will be on Tuesday. Microsoft and Sony will both go on Monday with no next-gen consoles ready to announce. Which games are you looking forward to? Any predictions on big surprises this year?
*Peripherals include the new Wii U Gamepad which is presumably more ergonomic and has sticks instead of slide buttons, the Wii U Pro controller (just like the Xbox) for longer gaming sessions, and previous Wii controllers - Wii remote, nunchuck, and Wii balance board.
**It’s called the Miiverse. It’s official; Nintendo has joined 2002.
What did people thing of Microsoft Press Conference?
I own a NES, SNES, N64, Game Cube and a Wii. I don’t know if I’ll jump the Nintendo ship. It’s possible. I can only afford one system a generation. I might hold out for the next Sony or MS consoles.
Mario and Zelda would be hard to part with. I still wonder about the Wii U. The Wii had such great games, but not enough 3rd party support. Also HUGE dry-spells. It’s jilted me.
I’ve sometimes wondered why Nintendo is even in the non-portable hardware market. Their cool ideas essentially all fall into the category of peripherals, and they’ve enough clout that they could actually market with some success. But their base hardware suuuuuuucks.
XBox owners must *really *like shooters … . :dubious:
I’m not thrilled with the direction they’ve taken Tomb Raider. I liked exploring ruins and kicking ass. The new survival horror/action shooter version of Lara Croft leaves me flat.
The most impressive press conference so far I think has been Ubisoft. Assassin’s Creed III, ShooterMania, Farcry 3, and Watch Dogs all look really interesting.
EA’s new physics tech for Madden was also cool.
I’ll be at the show for the next three days. I’ve got some developer meetings and I’ll be providing some minor support for one of my titles that’s on the floor.
So far I’m not happy about the fact that Microsoft is sticking to their guns with the 360. Sticking with 2004 hardware was cute for a while, and I think the industry has done good by having to focus on making better algorithms instead of just relying on new magical hardware, but the time has come to move on.
Granted, I don’t relish the inevitable $1500 bill from buying a bunch of new systems, but I feel like it’s time to up the hardware (preferably in the CPU department rather than the GPU, but I’m not gonna kid myself).
Personally, I’m pretty amped up about Halo 4, but that shouldn’t be a surprise coming from me. Splinter Cell looked very good, but a bit like an interactive movie. After that, I stopped paying as much attention, and it sounded like I didn’t miss much more from Microsoft. Just gimme Halo, Borderlands, and Minecraft, and I’ll be fine.
Well that was an impressively underwhelming display from Nintendo.
The biggest games were ports of games that will be 1-2 years old when the Wii U gets released. Three Mario games, really?
No Zelda, no Metroid, no Starfox…and they spent more time on that damn collection of minigames “NintendoLand” than anything else…yeah, looks riveting. :rolleyes:
But I saw something earlier that listed it as “Holiday” instead of “Launch”, which would mean it’s not a pack-in. That doesn’t really make sense to me, as I thought they’d just model things pretty closely to the Wii launch with Wii Sports.
Yea, I was also thinking that “NintendoLand” smelled like a game that would be packed-in with “something for everyone” in similar fashion to WiiSports or WiiPlay.
Then again, WiiSports was NOT a pack-in in Japan when Wii launched there, so maybe they haven’t yet made up their minds about pack-ins in different retail zones.
It was good to hear that the WiiU will support two of the tablet GamePads - but I would imagine that it won’t be until Round 2 of the big releases will we start to see games that actually use two.
Anyway though, they haven’t firmed up an actual launch date - I would not be surprised if they launch it in North America around Black Friday or maybe a couple of weeks beforehand. NintendoLand will probably be a launch title if not the actual pack-in. I can’t really imagine them “giving away” New Super Mario Bros U or Pikmin 3, nor can I really imagine them going with NO pack-in title at all.
I think they’ll probably try to stick with the $299 price point, which ought to include the system, one GamePad and a WiiMote, some sort of pack-in or pre-loaded game, a small-ish memory card (mebbe a 4gig SD card?) and whatever Menu software they’ve got, the MiiVerse was one thing they mentioned.
I think Nintendo’s in trouble. Casual gamers aren’t going to throw down the cash like they did for Wii, and the core Nintendo audience is jilted. At least I am. They better come up with some killer games and quick. People don’t get the Wii U like they did the Wii.
As for me, I guess I’m waiting a 1 1/2 to 2 years before I invest in another game system. Either that or buy a 360 or PS3.
That’s not really a bad option. If you’re only going one, PS3 is the way to go. For one, you can play online for free (360 requires X-Box Live Gold, $50 a year, to play online.) PS3 also has free* Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Hopefully they’ll get Hulu soon. Again, with the 360, you have to have the Gold account to be able to use these.
Some people say the games library on the PS3 is worse, but honestly, they share 90% of games. The only “big” exclusive the 360 has that PS3 doesn’t is the Halo series, but sense you don’t have a 360, I’m guessing you don’t care about Halo. By contrast, PS3 has a few really good exclusives:
Uncharted
Resistance
Demons Souls
3D Dot Game Heroes
Final Fantasy
InFamous
Little BigPlanet
In addition, PS+ (Sony’s “upper” level online service,) is a better deal than a Gold account. Like I said, online play and streaming video are all free on the PS3, so their pay service has actual good benefits. For one, you can have ALL of your saves backed up online. If your system or hard drive shits the bed, it’s nice to have a backup. Secondly, every month PS+ users get free games…and not shitty shovel-ware games, either, but full PS3 games you’d actually want to play. They also get discounts on games that are for sale in the PS3 Store.
*By free I mean no additional charge like the 360, you still have to have a Netflix account.
I’m so far underwhelmed by the Wii U, but I’ve owned every major Nintendo console. I don’t know if I can pass it up, even if I just get it for the next 3D Mario game.