That E3 Thing Part Two

July 16, 2008 · Filed Under Articles · Comment 

Or ‘Next Stop, My Own Deathstar’ by Reggie Fils-Aime, age 7 1/2.

Within the first few moments of Nintendo’s E3 presentation, once again filled with clips and snippets of people smiling in a most unnerving manner I could think of only one thing. Sirrius Cybernetics. The fictional organisation (or at least, until now I considered them fictional) from Douglas Adam’s “Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy” series who created a series of life enhancing devices each with their own unique personalities. Lifts, doors, ventilation systems, drink dispensers and of course, robots.

Share And Enjoy

The robots, for those who are culturally stunted, were marketed under the catchphrase “Your plastic pal who’s fun to be with”. It also said by the guide that the only profitable division of the Sirrius Cybernetics Corporation is the complaints division with their motto of “Share and Enjoy”. A motto later adopted to encompase the company as a whole. Unfortunately for Sirrius Cybernetics, their building sank halfway into the ground leaving the logo to read, in the language of the planet they settled upon, “Go stick your head in a pig.”

I’d draw comparisons with the half sunken translation and Nintendo’s past treatment of the European market, but I fear it’d be too damn easy. Oh, I just did. Sorry about that.

Browsing some of the pre-show rumours proved to be quite an entertaining experience. What would it be that Ninty would show? Kid Icarus Wii, a redesigned DS Lite, a possible solution for any near future storage problems likely to occur, more Wii channels… the list of predictions goes on and on and on. Nintendo apparently had other plans for their conference.

The games, it would seem, were entirely a secondary consideration for the Nintendo E3 press conference. Instead, they decided that rather than address the eager gamers out there and fulfill their “need” for new Nintendo news and material, Nintendo opted to use the stage as an opportunity to address an entirely different crowd of people… and no, not the casual market either…

Guff

If you strip away the marketing guff that Nintendo are now all about making people smile more (Do you trust anyone who smiles all the time? More to the point, do you trust any corporation that wants you to smile?), strip away the crumbs of gaming titles that they threw out to the crowd… then what are you left with from the presentation? Aside from the overwhelming impression that it won’t be long before a Nintendo Deathstar will be soon looming over the Earth with Reggie guiding it via a series of elaborate graphs? We all know Reggie loves his graphs…

Mainly a very smug Nintendo riding the crest of a wave and sticking two fingers up at the competition. Reggie made a number of polite but incredibly pointed comments about innovating within the industry. Comments clearly aimed at the other two big players. The thinly veiled inference being “simply copying us will get you nowhere”. All the talk of paradigm shifts, bringing in new gamers to the fold and making you all smile a Nintendo smile even if they have to staple it to your face could only come from a company sitting comfortably at the top of the pile and determined to make sure that anyone who wrote them off didn’t forget about it any time soon.

Interestingly, amongst all the self satisfied backslapping, idle banter and digs at the competition there was a small, but very telling cut away of a different nature. Whereas Microsoft before them and Sony after them (but more on Sony in part 3 obviously) were determined to show off the depth of third party support for their consoles, Nintendo seem to be fully aware that for the most part, their third party support isn’t quite what they’d hoped for. For a very brief period of time, there was what looked suspiciously like a marketing sell to third parties.

Dongle Me Do

Could it possibly be that the addition of the precision controller dongle, providing it works as it should, is Nintendo reaching out to third parties and saying “well, you complained - here, take this, work with this” ? The “look what you could win” pronouncement over the sales figures that could possibly be yours if you only just developed for the Wii smacked of Nintendo dropping the bragardary for a few moments and, well, I’m loathe to use the phrase begging but… or perhaps I am just reading too much into this and I’m a crazy paranoid conspiracy theorist.

For their grand finale we got a glimpse of the latest in the Wii Peripherals Collection (what?) - Wii Music. For a brief moment I laughed heartily as everyone on stage made utter twats out of themselves to what looks like the most embarassing attempt at a music game in history, but stopping and thinking about it for a few small moments I near shat myself laughing when they announced Codename Revolution was to become the Nintendo Wii.

Perhaps in many ways, Nintendo have won the market over in far more ways than they’re given credit for because I’m sure if the equivalent of Wii Music had appeared on the 360 or the PS3 I wouldn’t even give it a second thought. Right now, I can’t see how something so clearly insane can possibly work, but it did make me smile. For the wrong reasons, perhaps, but a smile all the same.

Maybe that was their plan all along…

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