E3 2014 thread

[Your Mom]

Is there a way to watch the Nintendo event if I missed it?

[apsham]

[Skummy]

I find it very, very odd to call out Nintendo for releasing the same stuff every year (or the jokes about "oh my god, a new IP lolz") when - as Zero said - all the major developers are almost literally releasing the exact same game every year. Just because there's a greater variety of same old shit doesn't mean it's not the same old shit.

But with Nintendo, we're well past the days where they would slap Mario's face on any old product and hope it would sell. To me, now, Mario is almost a seal of quality - you know that a Mario game is going to be good. "I've never cared for Mario" seems like an odd statement to me too, as in that, you're writing off a range of games that are vastly different from one another. When I say I don't like Call Of Duty, it's because I'm not a fan of by-the-numbers FPS games. But saying you don't like "Mario" is saying that you don't like 2D platformers, you don't like 3D platformers, you don't like racing games, you don't like RPGs, you don't like puzzle games...

The idea that Nintendo - with Mario or anything else - are "barely innovating", when they've taken more risks than any other hardware developer, and shaped gaming more than any other company, is mind-boggling to me. What's "innovative" about anything on Sony's line-up of games, whether compared to "Mario" or not?

Practically everything on Nintendo's line-up was a game that I want to go out and buy, or else that I could see why I'd go out and buy it. Practically everything on Sony and Microsoft's line-up hasn't phased me in the slightest, and I'm not watching this just to cheer on Nintendo. I am a gamer. I want to play games. Nintendo are offering the better games, as far as I can tell.

[thatshortguy]

Nintendo's strength is having a fun experience alongside friends in your own living room, which is something the other consoles just aren't targeting anymore. It may be the shrewdest, long-con move Nintendo could make: have a system that is a party piece as opposed to a status symbol.

[Skummy]

Nintendo's strength is having a fun experience alongside friends in your own living room, which is something the other consoles just aren't targeting anymore. It may be the shrewdest, long-con move Nintendo could make: have a system that is a party piece as opposed to a status symbol.

Exactly. They're looking at "fun" rather than achievements, status symbols, "experiences" and so on, and I think that's what a video game should be. It's a game. There's definitely a place for big immersive stories and more serious games, but it's important to remember why games are important.

I think we're reaching the dying days of console gaming as we know it, and the "casual" market is the most important one there is - people who would never call themselves gamers but play Candy Crush all through their lunch break - and Nintendo are the only traditional games company with any proven success in that area. It's a market they all but created with the Wii and the DS, and specifically marketed towards with excellent results - it always amused me when you had "console war" bickering about whether the PS3 or the 360 was a more successful console when the Wii outsold them in spades. But, for better or worse, Nintendo - or their critics - had cultivated this idea of the Wii as "something else".

I think the initial fault of the WiiU was that Nintendo didn't make it quite clear enough for that market exactly what it was, and tried to pander too much to a demographic who - for the most part - have already turned their back on them. But you now see the opposite happening, where Microsoft are trying to reach the "casual" market with Kinect, but it's completely at odds with how they market the console as a whole. Sony are saying that PS4 is "for the players" and all about games, and spend more time banging on about how to watch TV on it. Whereas Nintendo are on-point now. They're doing what they do, better than anyone.

[ROC]

Found it kind of funny and sad that Nintendo has far more female characters in their games than basically the entire E3 floor. It's like the other console and game makers don't even give a fuck about growing their audience outside the group that mostly has already bought in to the PS4/Xbone thing.

[Your Mom]

Hold on now. I love Nintendo but when did Sony "spend more time banging on about how to watch TV on it"? Their event was mostly games with one section about the Playstation TV which is a separate device and the bit about the Powers TV show

[apsham]

Hold on now. I love Nintendo but when did Sony "spend more time banging on about how to watch TV on it"? Their event was mostly games with one section about the Playstation TV which is a separate device and the bit about the Powers TV show

Yes exactly - and I don't like insinuating that Nintendo is harbouring the last bastion of having fun with your friends in a room when I play games with friends on a relatively regular basis without touching a Nintendo console. There's a lot of good points coming out of the Nintendo Camp, I guess I'll call it - but a hell of a lot of it is dismissing stuff being done on other consoles.

I loathe the idea that Nintendo is making products so people can live in Happyland and play games together, while MIcrosoft and Sony are out there trying to make people buy shit for a money grub. That is wildly unfair.

[zero]

I loathe the idea that Nintendo is making products so people can live in Happyland and play games together, while MIcrosoft and Sony are out there trying to make people buy shit for a money grub. That is wildly unfair.

I agree, that is unfair. Everyone's in it for a buck, but the major publishers keep consolidating, good studios are getting shut down and the industry in general has gotten more formulaic and they are the ones that develop for Sony and Microsoft as we all agree that Nintendo has no third party support. Sony and Microsoft both do first-party well, so I'll cut them some slack there.

This is the same shit that happened to the movie studios. Six studios control the majority of the films out there and at this rate, the games industry will be lucky to have two third-parties left by the end of this generation. I think people like Nintendo because they kinda are the Pixar of gaming, their name generally guarantees quality (though they do have a few Cars under their belts too) and their brand has a broad appeal.

[Crybaby Bunting]

Yeah, I mean you can just turn off trophy/achievement notifications or friends online notifications and you'd have the exact same experience on a non-nintendo console.

Sounds like the problem is that people are getting tushie tussled at the thought of turning off default options to cater for their own personal tastes in case they miss something.

[apsham]

I loathe the idea that Nintendo is making products so people can live in Happyland and play games together, while MIcrosoft and Sony are out there trying to make people buy shit for a money grub. That is wildly unfair.

I agree, that is unfair. Everyone's in it for a buck, but the major publishers keep consolidating, good studios are getting shut down and the industry in general has gotten more formulaic and they are the ones that develop for Sony and Microsoft as we all agree that Nintendo has no third party support. Sony and Microsoft both do first-party well, so I'll cut them some slack there.

This is the same shit that happened to the movie studios. Six studios control the majority of the films out there and at this rate, the games industry will be lucky to have two third-parties left by the end of this generation. I think people like Nintendo because they kinda are the Pixar of gaming, their name generally guarantees quality (though they do have a few Cars under their belts too) and their brand has a broad appeal.

I can roll with this. I don't want to sound or come off as stand-offish, but when I see a kind of double standard it grates on me something wicked.

I realize why a lot of people who are big into Nintendo are very protective of the product as a whole - the mainstream idea of Nintendo is that yeah, it's for kids and that they only make Mario games. But that's no reason to turn things around on Sony and Microsoft - who do very well with their first party stuff as well, it's just for a different crowd.

Lets not forget that Call of Duty has made forays into Nintendo consoles as well - and that it has ultimately failed because that's not what people buy Nintendo consoles for. It's nice to have of course, if you're overruled in your house - but just not the strength of the console. When Future Shop Canada did that free games thing, I managed to get Call Of Duty and there were like 300 people online at any time. Games like Mario Kart 8 are amazing for Nintendo consoles, transferring that over doesn't always work on other platforms.

[GoGo Yubari]

I care about none of this discussion because the Smash Invitational tournament is going on and it is rad.

[EWB's Best Poster.]

I dont think its fair that Sony is getting called out for talking about shows. They talked about one during a 2 hour and 15 minute presentation. That is longer than Nintendos (45 min) by 3 times, and for not more than ten minutes at most.

That is really not fair at all.

[Dan]

My son loves Cars. You take that back Zero!

[zero]

I dont think its fair that Sony is getting called out for talking about shows. They talked about one during a 2 hour and 15 minute presentation. That is longer than Nintendos (45 min) by 3 times, and for not more than ten minutes at most.

That is really not fair at all.

And it wasn't fair when everyone railed on Microsoft about their entertainment focus last year. Especially when consoles ceased to be just games consoles with the PS2. And the Wii U is inarguably the "pure gamez console" and gets no love from the nerds. And the One arguably had the better launch line-up over the PS4.

[Crybaby Bunting]

I dont think its fair that Sony is getting called out for talking about shows. They talked about one during a 2 hour and 15 minute presentation. That is longer than Nintendos (45 min) by 3 times, and for not more than ten minutes at most.

That is really not fair at all.

And it wasn't fair when everyone railed on Microsoft about their entertainment focus last year. Especially when consoles ceased to be just games consoles with the PS2. And the Wii U is inarguably the "pure gamez console" and gets no love from the nerds. And the One arguably had the better launch line-up over the PS4.

The reason everyone railed on at Microsoft last year was because they spent a great deal of the event talking about how the console was a netflix/cablebox machine with always online and a pointless kinect camera that needed to be there because the code was hard wired into the console so it'd be impossible to sell it separately. The fact that they've backtracked so much since then confirms that they did go about it the wrong way, and thus any of the criticism was actually justified.

I know that even though it might on paper have a great lineup of games, but its launch window games didn't exactly set the world alight and outright lying to your customers about the console doesn't exactly inspire much confidence.

[EWB's Best Poster.]

Yeah, no, it was VERY fair to say that Microsoft spent more than 10 minutes talking about anything but games in a 2 hour and 15 minute presentation.

That isn't even close to a comparison.

[Benji]

I dont think its fair that Sony is getting called out for talking about shows. They talked about one during a 2 hour and 15 minute presentation. That is longer than Nintendos (45 min) by 3 times, and for not more than ten minutes at most.

That is really not fair at all.

And it wasn't fair when everyone railed on Microsoft about their entertainment focus last year. Especially when consoles ceased to be just games consoles with the PS2. And the Wii U is inarguably the "pure gamez console" and gets no love from the nerds. And the One arguably had the better launch line-up over the PS4.

Seriously? Every time an iconic Nintendo game gets announced for a console people go apeshit.

[Roster Depth Sicko No. 2]

I'm going through some of the game highlight slots their showing, I'm now more convinced than ever that Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor is going to be amazing, and can't wait for more footage later. No Man's Sky looks really good too, and seems a very different style of game, so keen to see how that turns out. Arkham Knight looks great graphically, but I'll want to see more to know if it's worth getting. The Batmobile looks a good addition though.

Hoping for more good things from Far Cry 4, Assassib's Creed: Unity and the new Tomb Raider later.

[zero]

I dont think its fair that Sony is getting called out for talking about shows. They talked about one during a 2 hour and 15 minute presentation. That is longer than Nintendos (45 min) by 3 times, and for not more than ten minutes at most.

That is really not fair at all.

And it wasn't fair when everyone railed on Microsoft about their entertainment focus last year. Especially when consoles ceased to be just games consoles with the PS2. And the Wii U is inarguably the "pure gamez console" and gets no love from the nerds. And the One arguably had the better launch line-up over the PS4.

Seriously? Every time an iconic Nintendo game gets announced for a console people go apeshit.

And yet, no one owns the console.

Yeah, no, it was VERY fair to say that Microsoft spent more than 10 minutes talking about anything but games in a 2 hour and 15 minute presentation.

That isn't even close to a comparison.

The point is, after their conference, everyone was all "OMG I JUST WANT GAMES, M$!" when they had games, plenty of them, obviously it was a game console, and the idea that talking about a console's other features in 2013 shouldn't have surprised anyone. Game consoles stopped being game consoles when the PS2 played DVDs and to pile on Microsoft for that last year when they had plenty of other problems just seemed silly.