cortjezter wrote:i see your points op, but to play devil's advocate--not necessarily my view:
NSMB Mii is not a game. it was a tech demo just like the rest of what was shown, and we were reminded of this several times.
My mistake, although that means we didn't see a single first-party game for Wii U at E3. Even for a teaser announcement, you have to admit that's disappointing.
cortjezter wrote:the controller may have a number of individual elements seen before, but have you ever had all of those things work in one device at the same time? also, the whole interaction element between the controller('s screen) and the tv wasn't mentioned above. that is new, and will be a huge opportunity. that interaction was probably the biggest idea they showed.
I'd argue the 3DS uses all of those elements (motion + attached screen), but I'll concede that the interaction between the two screens is new. With DS/3DS, the screens are fixed relative to one another and you can't do things like using one as a sniper scope - that is pretty cool.
cortjezter wrote:i concede that the most enthusiastic gamers won't be wowed by anything less than full disclosure of information and exhaustive specs that have to be beyond what even the craziest mofo was dreaming up, but that clearly wasn't the point of their super-early announcement. this system is probably more than a year away; why reveal too much? it could be imitated by the competition or change between now and then.
I'd actually argue that Nintendo could brag about how powerful the Wii U is without revealing specifics. Honestly, I don't think most gaming enthusiasts know enough about computer hardware to interpret the specs anyway. They could've followed Sony's approach and done a bunch of impressive looking BS benchmarks and numbers to simply lead the audience into thinking it's insanely powerful.
Here's a simple one: we found out right after the conference that Wii U is running a Power 7 chip, the same architecture as the Watson supercomputer that beat humans at Jeopardy. They should have mentioned this during the conference. The fact alone that it's the same chip design as the Watson cluster doesn't actually tell us much about the system's performance, but it indicates to the audience that Nintendo is serious about horsepower ("they're using Watson's brain in the thing!"). It would have done a lot to communicate to the "core" that this isn't going to be another underpowered system (regardless of whether it is or not, it's hard to break first impressions. If Nintendo had bragged about how powerful it is, people would remember that and stick with their impression that it's powerful. Instead, people remember the Wii, see the Wii branding on it, see Nintendo say nothing about its power other than being HD, and assume it's only on par with 360/PS3).
cortjezter wrote:e3 was about showing the controller and announcing the concept; not unveiling near-complete hardware or software, because it's simply too early to show that level.
A major part of its concept, at least according to interviews, is to appeal to the kind of people who didn't like the Wii. These people care about horsepower and online. Nintendo talked about neither.
cortjezter wrote:that said, i was at the ubisoft roundtable where they did show off two games in development; games that look effing amazing from a visual/technical standpoint, and that's apparently after only a couple months with their dev kits. not my cup of tea as far as games go, but they're definitely 'core' games, and the lovers of these types of core games were cheering loudly in that little theater... jaded journalists, no less.
So why didn't Nintendo show this at their press conference?
cortjezter wrote:no excitement? maybe it was one of those things you had to be in the audience to get, but the nokia theater was aroar with excitement, cheering, and amazement. i haven't met anyone who saw the japanese garden demonstration in person and was unimpressed by it.
speaking of impressive, the zelda demo was also shown as mostly a visual demo (labelled "HD experience"), though it had some basic interactive elements as well. so not just one visual demo was shown, and neither was tepidly received; at least by those who actually saw it firsthand.
I've been impressed by the Zelda HD demo, based on the off-screen footage I've seen. And see, that off-screen thing is part of the problem. I've found exactly zero direct-feed footage of the Wii U tech demos online. Because you're right, every impression I've read from someone who saw these demos *in person* has been positive. But the vast majority of gaming enthusiasts see this stuff online, and with nothing but crappy off-screen or live-stream captured footage, they're not as impressive (more so the bird one, even off-screen the Zelda one looks great, but unfortunately, the bird one is the one they made a big deal of in the press conference - and people watching the live streams generally seemed to think it looked like an early PS3 tech demo).
cortjezter wrote:we got the most basic tease of a reveal. since when does that give anyone license to jump ship or make snap judgements on anything? the precedent when it comes to games is that you don't pass judgement until launch day; before that it's about keeping a positive frame of mind because things are unfinished and potential exists. potential is a good thing.
People always make snap judgments. Even if people don't talk about them, and try not to let them influence their decisions, first impressions are important.
by Zidane » 21 Jun 2011 05:23 
to me, that says they'd be more interested in revealing software or trailers than the hardware numerics.
