+- Tendo City (https://www.tendocity.net)
+-- Forum: Tendo City: Metropolitan District (https://www.tendocity.net/forumdisplay.php?fid=4)
+--- Forum: Tendo City (https://www.tendocity.net/forumdisplay.php?fid=42)
+--- Thread: Rating the E3 2015 Conferences (/showthread.php?tid=6864)
Rating the E3 2015 Conferences - A Black Falcon - 17th June 2015
I'm judging mostly based on whether they had games I want to play.
Nintendo World Championships - A. Great show! I hope that in the future Nintendo goes back to live press conferences (with more reveals), but this tourney was great fun, I really liked watching it.
Nintendo - A-. Nintendo showed almost nothing for next year, but their library for this year is great, stronger for 3DS than Wii U but the Wii U has some good-looking games as well -- Star Fox and Mario Maker look fantastic, and hopefully Xenoblade Chronicles X as well. Yeah, I also wish that the conference had had a big reveal of some major upcoming Wii U game, but otherwise it was quite good. The hate Nintendo is receiving here is crazy. The 3DS got some great stuff announced (new Zelda! New Mario RPG! And maybe the Metroid game too, MP Hunters was fun.), and this year's Wii U library is pretty good.
Sony - B to B+. Yeah, the three big reveals are a big deal, and they showed some other great stuff that's a ways off too (Horizon could be good), but Sony showed NOTHING for this year. Sony and Nintendo really are opposites here, and while shocking reveals are great, why wait all that time for the games with nothing until then, when Nintendo has good games now AND will surely also have other good games in the future, even if they haven't announced them yet? And as for those three reveals... FFVII isn't a game I've ever found interesting enough to stick with, but it is cool it's getting a remake; TLG looks okay but dated; and I found Shenmue 1 quite boring so I doubt I'd like this new one either. So yeah, as cool as it was to see them, for me personally the games aren't my favorite things.
Square-Enix - B. Square's conference was pretty impressive, loaded with pretty good-looking games that look pretty interesting. I hope Star Ocean 5 is good! The main thing holding back this conference was that the biggest titles were already shown yesterday at other conferences -- FFVII Remake, World of Final Fantasy (is this an F2P game, or a traditional RPG? I can't tell.), Tomb Raider, etc. Still pretty good, though, though they could work a bit on their presentation.
Microsoft- C+. This was one of MS's better conferences, but still was a bit thin on games. MS definitely has a better 2015 library than Sony, but they didn't have the big reveals Sony did, and we already know about their major titles for this year. Recore and the Rare game could be good, but I'll need to see more. Also I really find it annoying that MS won't talk much about PC in their conferences. Microsoft, so long as you show that PC isn't important by not talking about it in your conference, I'll never believe your "we care now about PC gaming, really!" talk. And trolling PC gamers by later announcing that KI and Gears remaster or whatever are getting PC ports but not Halo or Forza is kind of annoying; I'm not really a fan of any of those four franchises, but still, if you're going to support the PC, release your major titles for it. It IS a Microsoft platform after all.
Ubisoft - C. The conference was well presented and as entertaining as ever, but they showed very few games I really want to play. I like Ubisoft's racing and platformer games the most, but they had almost none of those apart from a new console Trackmania game. That'll probably be cool, but otherwise the conference was just way too much Tom Clancy stuff I'll probably never play. Still, Ubi does always have one of the funniest conferences, and that is worth something.
EA - C-. Mirror's Edge 2 and the yarn game were the highlights, and those look great. I am particularly happy to hear that Mirror's Edge 2 won't have guns, that's a step in the right direction! Mass Effect could be good too, but they showed little of it. Still, this conference was mostly bland. There wasn't much interesting here, but nothing completely terrible either.
Bethesda - D. Dishonored 2 could be great, but nothing else here was at all interesting. Doom, looks pretty seriously disappointing, and the only Fallout games I care about were made by Black Isle. I don't like Bethesda much, and this conference was a good example of why.
I can't rate the PC Gamer conference for sure right now, haven't watched it all. It looks interesting, but low-budget and light on reveals. Still, it's great that it happened at all. MS showed their usual lack of interest in the PC, so someone had to step up! And they had lots of great and interesting PC games to show, even if they were't new. So yeah, B-something grade probably.
Rating the E3 2015 Conferences - Great Rumbler - 17th June 2015
Quote:Nintendo - A-. Nintendo showed almost nothing for next year, but their library for this year is great, stronger for 3DS than Wii U but the Wii U has some good-looking games as well -- Star Fox and Mario Maker look fantastic, and hopefully Xenoblade Chronicles X as well. Yeah, I also wish that the conference had had a big reveal of some major upcoming Wii U game, but otherwise it was quite good. The hate Nintendo is receiving here is crazy. The 3DS got some great stuff announced (new Zelda! New Mario RPG! And maybe the Metroid game too, MP Hunters was fun.), and this year's Wii U library is pretty good.
Bethesda - D. Dishonored 2 could be great, but nothing else here was at all interesting. Doom, looks pretty seriously disappointing, and the only Fallout games I care about were made by Black Isle. I don't like Bethesda much, and this conference was a good example of why.
Bethesda had the best show by far. Nintendo's was probably the worst.
Rating the E3 2015 Conferences - A Black Falcon - 17th June 2015
You're crazy, that's entirely backwards. This "Nintendo's show was awful" narrative is ridiculous, they showed a lot of good games!
Rating the E3 2015 Conferences - Great Rumbler - 17th June 2015
Nintendo showed maybe 3 games that I had any interest at all in: Star Fox, new Xenoblade, and...uh...maybe something else.
As for Bethesda:
New Doom - Looks like what a modern Doom should look like basically, fast-paced with lots of demon-killing. What were you expecting in order to be so disappointed? I don't get that at all.
Fallout 4 - Tons of content and things to do, lots of detail in everything, not entirely convinced about the new dialogue system but it'll probably work out okay
Dishonored 2 - The first Dishonored was one of my favorite games from its year
Vault Sim - Looks fun, I'll try it out when the PC versions is available
Don't really care anything about Battlecry and ESO
Rating the E3 2015 Conferences - A Black Falcon - 17th June 2015
Great Rumbler Wrote:Nintendo showed maybe 3 games that I had any interest at all in: Star Fox, new Xenoblade, and...uh...maybe something else.Seriously? The new 3DS Zelda game looks great (I really want to play it!), Wii U Mario Tennis will surely be fun, Metroid Prime Federation Force could use better art design but the basic gameplay looks solid, Mario Maker looks fantastic and is clearly one of the best games of the show (even Jeff of Giant Bomb thought it was pretty good, after playing it)... Nintendo has a better library than the haters this E3 are giving them credit for. This definitely wasn't Nintendo's best E3, obviously, but they're showing some good stuff, for Nintendo fans at least.
Now, Nintendo should have realized that saying nothing about games releasing after early 2016 was going to open the floodgates of people saying "Wii U is dead, NX releases 2016, Wii U is dead", so if that ISN'T true (and I hope it's not, that'd be too soon) Nintendo should have headed it off by talking about games releasing after early 2016, but still, Nintendo has a solid library for this year.
Rating the E3 2015 Conferences - Dark Jaguar - 18th June 2015
ABF, I'm actually pretty excited about most of what I saw at Nintendo's thing as well. I'm not exactly sure what anyone really wanted out of it, short of detailed descriptions of their online plans going forward (that would have been nice).
Sony pretty much "won" E3 though. Those first 3 games are basically the ONLY things I'm interested in from them, but wow are they doozies. Basically, the only thing left is for Silent Hills to somehow be saved, and we've got pretty much all big gamer wishes from the past... 20 years.
Rating the E3 2015 Conferences - Great Rumbler - 18th June 2015
Quote:Now, Nintendo should have realized that saying nothing about games releasing after early 2016 was going to open the floodgates of people saying "Wii U is dead, NX releases 2016, Wii U is dead", so if that ISN'T true (and I hope it's not, that'd be too soon) Nintendo should have headed it off by talking about games releasing after early 2016, but still, Nintendo has a solid library for this year.
The next mainline Zelda being a complete no-show should really tell you all you need to know about Nintendo's plans past early-2016. The Wii U is dead in the water and there's little hope of recovery at this point, the best move for them is to just move Zelda forward to the NX and prep it as a launch title. Otherwise, they're just throwing away money and opportunity.
Rating the E3 2015 Conferences - Dark Jaguar - 18th June 2015
Do you really think they're going to release their next console THAT soon? That would alienate everyone who's got a Wii U and fragment the market rather severely. I wouldn't read too much into things like that. Can you HONESTLY look at the games currently out on all 3 systems and say that Nintendo doesn't currently have WAY more to offer than their competition? I've got about 3 games each between my XBox One and PS4, and meanwhile I've got 20 games on my Wii U. Some aren't as good as I had hoped (Wario Ware) and this E3 I realized they're trying to release just as many Mario Party games as they generally push each generation, but "hiding" it behind reskins, but seriously, LOOK at what they've got on there!
http://www.destructoid.com/nintendo-lost-e3-because-it-failed-to-exceed-my-unreasonably-high-expectations-294255.phtml
Nintendo's biggest mistake was focusing on games that aren't out yet but have already been announced. However, consider how Nintendo has been handling their announcements lately. They didn't have much left TO save for E3 considering how much they've focused on their "Nintendo Direct" announcements. In fact, I distinctly get the impression that they were using E3 as just another Nintendo Direct. I think the E3 format itself is pretty outdated anyway. There's this little thing called The Youtubes that has become a hot trend with the young people of today, the cat's pajamas if you will.
Nintendo is very behind in a lot of online ways, but in a few ways (Miiverse, Nintendo Direct) they're innovating. Every big game announcement before this had already been revealed in various Nintendo Direct feeds over the past few months. E3 is only a disappointment if you ignore that context. I didn't even WATCH E3 this year, I just waited for the announcements to get collated into an easy-to-digest readable feed, you know, something that wouldn't waste 5 hours of my life when all I actually need to know could be absorbed in half an hour.
In short, GR, I think you might be overreacting a touch. Well, I say that, but appearances and who "won" an E3 can be surprisingly important in what console someone gets. Remember Sony's ridiculously easy "win" a while back? Yeah, that sort of thing happens now and again.
Still, I'm more interested in a larger number of games coming out for Nintendo's systems than I am for the others. What does that tell you? Xenoblade Chronicles X looks like it'll be fun. Yoshi's Woolly World looks fun. Star Fox Zero looks not only fun, but like it's taking elements from the scrapped Star Fox 2 game. The new Zelda coop game looks like it'll actually implement teamwork better than the previous two Four Swords games (and I loved those, especially Adventures). I'm very "iffy" about Metroid, but if it turns out to be a Four Swords style entry, but with Metroid Prime gameplay, it might actually end up pretty fun too. The new Chibi-Robo game looks like a platformer, and frankly I'm not nearly as interested in it as I was the previous Chibi-Robo games. I loves me some Fire Emblem so I'm very interested in "Fates". I am VERY interested in Paper Jam. Bravely Default is one of the best RPGs to come out of Square-Enix in... over a decade actually (a great successor to the DS game Final Fantasy 4 Heroes of Light), so I'm very interested in Bravely Second. I really enjoyed Fatal Frame 2 (a game a friend kept recommending to me) so I'm very interested in the new one (though apparently the 3DS one was a disappointment). Neither the Animal Crossing "lite" game or a port of Hyrule Warriors (which I already have) interest me all that much. If you don't have Hyrule Warriors though, pick it up. Not really a Zelda game, but still surprisingly fun. Yo-Kai Watch is finally getting brought to the US, and I'm interested in how that works (looks kinda like Pokemon but if all of them were ghost-types).
Okay, so that's already a huge number of games I'm looking forward to, but Mario Maker is still the most exciting game to me. I just... love how easy they seem to have made it to design really insane levels with unique mechanics. I never got into the Lunar editor (sorry Weltall, I haven't played much more of your mod lately, but I intend to get back to it), but I think I'll be getting into this one.
Again, MOST of those games had already been announced, but that's Nintendo Direct for you. I still don't see how you can look at a list of upcoming games like that and not find at least ONE thing that excites you.
Rating the E3 2015 Conferences - A Black Falcon - 18th June 2015
Great Rumbler Wrote:The next mainline Zelda being a complete no-show should really tell you all you need to know about Nintendo's plans past early-2016. The Wii U is dead in the water and there's little hope of recovery at this point, the best move for them is to just move Zelda forward to the NX and prep it as a launch title. Otherwise, they're just throwing away money and opportunity.No, I don't agree. Nintendo says that they did what they did because they wanted to focus on games that are actually coming soon. There's no proof behind the theory you give here, and I don't really believe it. Regardless of whenever the NX is coming (and I hope it's 2017), there will of course be Wii U games releasing after early 2016. Nintendo could, and should, have hinted at what some of them will be, but they didn't in order to focus on games for this year.
As for when Nintendo should release new hardware, it's tricky. What should they do? Release something sooner (late next year, only 4 years after the Wii U) that's more powerful than the PS4/XONE but far less powerful than Sony and MS's next consoles? That's what they did with the Wii U, and it didn't work at all. Really push tech? But releasing mid-generation, even that system would be outclassed by Sony and MS's next machines, which would release quite a bit later. Wait for longer? Tech-wise this would be better, but Wii U isn't selling well... so yeah, I don't know what the best path would be.
But overall, too soon would be a big mistake. I'd say try to hang on with Wii U as long as you can, because the later the NX releases, the smaller the power gap between it and Sony and MS's next consoles -- and as the Wii U shows, Nintendo REALLY needs to stop releasing significantly less powerful hardware if they want third-party support. Well, the other option would be another massive Wii-level hit that would force third parties to care a bit more about their system regardless of power, but there's no guarantee that they could have a hit like that.
Rating the E3 2015 Conferences - Dark Jaguar - 18th June 2015
It's true, I mean seriously, when has a rushed "this will fix it" console release EVER worked out? My 32X questions the wisdom of such an action, as it stares into Sight Beyond Sight in my Virtual Boy.
I want to be clear, I didn't get super excited about E3 this year at all. I read the digest after the fact, and from that perspective, those first few minutes of Sony's conference were the most surprising and exciting part of the show, and ALL of those things were basically just saying "that game you thought was cancelled is being worked on again" or "we're remaking a game you already played and can still get" (I would have been happy with a retranslation). THOSE were the biggest surprises of E3. I guess I'm just sorta "over" the concept of the "megaton" announcement.
Rating the E3 2015 Conferences - A Black Falcon - 18th June 2015
Oh, and for games on the Wii U, Yoshi's Wooly World looks like the best and most innovative Yoshi game since the '90s. Really, it looks great, it'll clearly be a very good platformer!
Dark Jaguar Wrote:It's true, I mean seriously, when has a rushed "this will fix it" console release EVER worked out? My 32X questions the wisdom of such an action, as it stares into Sight Beyond Sight in my Virtual Boy.Yeah, that rarely works. Another example of this is an earlier attempt at this by Sega; after the SG-1000 failed badly in Japan because it was dated compared to the Famicom when both released in mid 1983, Sega came back just 2 1/2 years later with the Mark III, aka the Sega Master System. It released late in the generation, hardware-wise. The system was a big success in Europe and Brazil, but in Japan, the market it was first made for, it failed just about as badly as the SG-1000, because the NES had the market and it was way too late for Sega to take it away from them.
Rating the E3 2015 Conferences - Dark Jaguar - 18th June 2015
Plus, Wii U has been getting some life breathed into it from their recent games. It remains to be seen just how much of a push Splatoon's release made, but May's sales were healthier than they've been. In all fairness, I've been cheering on the Wii U from the start, so I'll concede a bias on my part. (That is, the part of someone with an avatar directly ripping off the Wii U logo.)
There's a few considerable options for NX. I highly doubt they'll be pushing a release this soon, but when the next gen comes along, I expect Nintendo is planning to finally ditch the "one generation behind" strategy they've been using since the Wii and go back to actually trying to compete with system specs again. That is to say, this generation more than before they're finding out their "make it cheap" strategy isn't working like it once did. They only managed to get the 3DS on track with a big cut to the system's price months after release, and they're also cutting the price of the Wii U. In both cases, for some time they were selling at a loss just like the other console makers. They may be realizing that they'll need to do that from the start this time around, and even then Nintendo's system is going to end up being more expensive than past Nintendo consoles.
There's one alternative, and it's a big one that'd require the whole industry to cooperate. I'm talking about a "console standard", where everyone comes together to design the specs of the next gen console. All games will work on everyone's consoles, because they'll be fundamentally the same system with the same specs. In many ways, it'll be like a PC, but with fixed specs until the standard gets revised. Each company that wants to sell hardware will be selling their own, but for users it really won't matter which one they buy. Part of the spec would require either a fixed OS, or the ability to install competing OSes. Even the controller would be standardized, with room to add in non-spec controllers for more experimental stuff. The few areas of wiggle room would be things like storage space, number of USB ports, and other connector options. That's the future for consoles, I think. Heck, if they decided to base the specs off IBM compatibility, then consoles would be "fixed spec" versions of a PC and capable of running PC OSes and games too.
Rating the E3 2015 Conferences - Great Rumbler - 18th June 2015
Quote:No, I don't agree. Nintendo says that they did what they did because they wanted to focus on games that are actually coming soon. There's no proof behind the theory you give here, and I don't really believe it. Regardless of whenever the NX is coming (and I hope it's 2017), there will of course be Wii U games releasing after early 2016. Nintendo could, and should, have hinted at what some of them will be, but they didn't in order to focus on games for this year.
You're certainly free to believe whatever you want, but Nintendo is in desperate need of a reversal of fortunes and the Wii U looks to be the last thing that will give them that.
Rating the E3 2015 Conferences - A Black Falcon - 18th June 2015
Great Rumbler Wrote:You're certainly free to believe whatever you want, but Nintendo is in desperate need of a reversal of fortunes and the Wii U looks to be the last thing that will give them that.You sound far too certain for someone who is basically supporting a theory that has no proof behind it... there's no proof behind the idea that Nintendo showed nothing beyond early '16 because they're switching to NX early. It's just a guess, and not the only valid one.
The only thing we have is a statement from Kensuke Tanabe (the producer of Metroid Prime: Federation Force and previous Metroid Prime games) that he has ideas for a new Metroid Prime game, but a new Metroid Prime would take 3 years to make and thus would probably be a NX game: http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/06/17/e3-2015-what-metroid-primes-producer-wants-in-the-next-sequel . Beyond that, nothing. And that's not proof of a 2016 release, certainly, even if it's disappointing (that a MP game for Wii U probably isn't currently in development).
Sure, Nintendo is in trouble, but I explained why I think switching early -- that is, next year -- could be a bad decision. If you disagree, I'd like to hear why.