Nintendo's E3 Press Conference

Then finally, the moment we had been waiting for, came. Nintendo were to show Café. Every muscle in my body where cramping up with excitement. This was going to be the most awesome press conference ever.

Shigeru Miyamoto gets up on the stage, to start the show by talking about The Legend of Zelda, as it celebrates 25 years this year. Among the Zelda announcements where Links awakening and Four Swords Adventures to the DSi, and that's about it. He talk about how Ocarina of time 3d comes out soon and Skyward sword will be released in time for Christmas.

Then, the 3D started. Five Nintendo-games were shown for the platform 3DS. First up was Mario Kart. It looks like a Mario Kart-game, so it should be good fun. And if it's anything like Mario Kart usually is on the handheld consoles, this should be really good. With online multiplayer, this could be really great actually, looking forward to seeing it when it's released.

Second up was yet another Nintendo 64 conversion with some extra stuff, like online multiplayer: Starfox 64 3D. This is something of a warning sign for me. The game is great, as it was then it first was released, but I just hope that Nintendo won't put too much effort into just renovating Nintendo 64 games and releasing them in 3D.

Next up was Super Mario 3D. It's a brand new Super Mario game, drawing a lot of its inspiration from Super Mario Bros. 3. This really tickles my nostalgia sense. Somehow it fits perfectly in the trend called new-retro. Just as New Super Mario Bros. was inspired by the first games, or rather the whole 2D era of Super Mario. Just looking at it gives me some type of sense that this will be a great game.

Then they showed another new trailer and gameplay footage for Kid Icarus: Uprising. A couple of new features where shown, like, again, multiplayer. This it probably one of the few games that compels me to buy a 3DS. A lot of the games shown are games that I would by if I actually had a 3DS, but this one actually makes me want to buy one. As long as they succeed with the gameplay, this is a game that will make 3DS even more attractive.

The fifth and final Nintendo-game shown for the 3DS was Luigi’s Mansion 2. Haven't played the first one, but I think it looks a little like a Nintendo version of Ghostbusters. The atmosphere is great, but I'm not sure how fun it actually looks. Looks kind of repetitive. But who knows, I, for one, likes Luigi so let us hope that this is a great game after all

Next up was a video of some third party games to look forward to, like A couple of Resident Evil-games and a conversion of what I consider to be a real indie-pearl; Cave Story. If you haven't played it, get it now!

Nintendo ended their 3DS section by presenting Pokedex 3D. It looks really stupid, could be a cool idea, but the fact that it only contains the 150 new Pokémons of Black/White makes it less interesting.

Then it happened. Nintendo showed us, for the first time, their new stationary console. It is called... Wii U... WHAT THE?!! Wii U?! Seriously? Why couldn't they have gone with Stream, like it was rumoured? Or Café, even that sounds better then Wii U. I hated the name Wii, but I learned to live with it. Wii U sounds retarded. Wii U sounds like an upgrade, rather than a completely new console. Let us hope that I'm wrong by saying that.

I, as many others it may seem, thought that it was only a new controller. I got really scared. When I understood that it in fact was an entire console, I calmed a little. The Console, with the new controller as the new revolutionary thing about it, was still a big let down. The controller looks great, with things like camera, microphone, gyro, dual analogue sticks and a big touch pad. The fact that it actually looks more like a controller make me happy, and it would seem that it makes the third party developers happy as well. You can play, due to the screen on the controller, on the controller if the TV is occupied. The only thing I'm concerned about when it comes to the controller is the size of it, it doesn't look that comfortable to hold, plus that the analogue sticks looks tedious to get to.

Other things revealed about the console itself were things like HD-graphics (yay) and that's about it. No specifications were made, no price, no nothing. The trailers shown for the various games weren't even shown on the Wii U, but on a PS3. The only thing that we actually got to see from a Nintendo-view was a graphic demo of The Legend of Zelda, although that looked amazing. Let's hope it will come to the console later on.

After a small announcement that it might be a Super Smash Bros.-game on the platform, a trailer was shown, showing the games being released on Wii U by third party developers. Among them, Darksiders II (Looks really cool), Tekken, (For the first time on a Nintendo console!), Batman Arkam City (Got by far the biggest response from the audience, and sounds great to me), Assassins Creed (figures, but good game) and Ninja Gaiden 3.

And that's it. No Nintendo-games at all. This was so disappointing, that I left the Nintendo E3 press conference with a big disappointment. But then I started to think. This was actually great. Nintendo-games will come, of course they will. But the fact that Nintendo now has the support of this many third party developers is amazing. And the fact that many of the games are games that focuses on a mature audience is a big step in narrowing the gap between Nintendo and the hardcore-players they lost with Wii. But too much is still a question mark. Maybe it's because the hype was way up in the skies, that we felt that this was a failure. Or the fact that it was announced to be two hours long but only lasted 45 minutes. Hm, here's a thought, maybe Nintendo decided to skip a big part of the show. Maybe they're hiding something. Let's hope we get to enjoy more of Wii U (worst name ever) during E3. And to be honest, Nintendo's E3 conference was still better than Microsoft and Sony’s conferences, just not as much better than I thought.

Café anyone?

Okay, I really need to address the newly announced "Wii 2". The name given to it is Café or, as some rumours says, Stream. I'm not sure if any of theses will be the real name, if we look at the history of Nintendo consoles but I do like the sound of Stream. Café is quite awful, as was Wii, but I digress. The name is more of a way to describe the console, as the Wii once was named Revolution, to describe that the Wii was nothing more than a revolution, as it was, for the whole gaming industry, in this case, Café suggests a pleasant way of interacting with others (Better online service *fingers crossed*). It also suggests us leaving our homes for this.

I'm not sure what to make of the name Stream. It could be a way to describe the rumoured controllers where you can "stream" the games to the controller and carry it with you. This really sounds amazing, but I do have some fears for the concept. The first is that it sounds awfully expensive. I think the controllers are expensive as they are, but this really sounds a bit much. My other concern is if it is as advanced as we think. A more logic choice would be for the controller to act as a "light" version of the game, where you do things with the controller to win better stuff for the game or maybe there are things you need to do on the controller screen to advance in the real game. I think of Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures, where you played on a Gameboy advance, plugged in to your Gamecube, which gave some cool opportunities gameplaywise. Still, when have Nintento ever been logical? I do trust them to make the best decisions, enough to not worry too much.

There is a rumour saying that the Café will have better hardware than both the Ps3 and The Xbox360. Frankly, it has to be, not to be outdone by Microsoft and Sony when they release The 720 and Ps4. To at all appeal to the market, they need to have both support for HD, a HDD storage device and I think it needs to loose the DVD-format. There are rumours of a Blu-ray format to the Café, if so, great, but I think that both the Ps4 and the Xbox720 will come with technology much more advanced than that. This means, once again, that Nintendos console is one generation behind. If another rumour is true, that the Café will be more appealing to the hardcore players, it needs to have an edge that the other consoles won’t.

One of the things that went wrong with the Wii was the fact that it didn't have the support of many of the third-part developers. And then they did the developers couldn't make the games as they made them to the other consoles, meaning that the Wii often got a halfassed version of the game. With the new, more classical controller, I think that developers will have an easier time doing games on the console. Let's just hope that the support is bigger.

A lot of other rumours have been spread, like the console having a design similar to the SNES, which sounds great. Some say it's as big as the 360, which I think is a bit big, they should try making it small from the beginning, like they did with the Wii. Some rumours suggests that the Café will not have support for Wii, which may be a consequence to switching to blu-ray, but I hope that rumour is false, because there are many great games on the Wii that many players won't be able to experience.

If Nintendo actually releases the console as early as mars 2012, as they said themselves when the console was confirmed, they will have a huge advantage over Microsoft and Sony. I hope that Café is great, I hope that Nintendo learned from Wii, which still was a great console in my opinion, and created a monster console. We'll just have to wait until E3 and see what Nintendo has cooked up. Release the Kraken.

Why all this negatiWiity

It seems that anywhere I read, the Wii gets bashed and disliked for various reasons. I just don't get it. I'm going to argue my point at the most common complains for the Wii.

There aren't any good games for the Wii!
Ehm, Super Mario Galaxy one and two, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Metroid Prime 3, Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Awesome partygame!), Punch-out!!, Rayman Raving Rabbits (Yeah, it exist on the other consoles too, but seriously, it's soo much funnier in the Wii), Super Paper Mario, Zack and Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure, Mario Kart Wii, The Bit.trip-series, The Legend of Zelda: Twillight Princess, just to name a few, and not to name the games released non-exusivly to the Wii.

I mean no good adult games. These are all kids games!
Well, you have No More Heroes one and two, Red Steel 2 (not the first one, that sucked), Mad World, Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition and as mentioned above, Mertoid Prime 3 and THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: TWILLIGHT PRINCESS!!! And just because Nintendo have decided to go with a more kids friendly look to most of it's games doesn't mean that you can't play them. If you think like that you might miss out on some of the best games on the console, and on the market for that mater.

What about the console then? The Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 are so much more technologically advanced! The Wii doesn't even have a hard drive!
That depends on what you defines as technology. Sure, the fact that you need a SD-card to save your games is extremely annoying, and I don't like that I can't play my games in HD, but what about the motion controller? Isn't that much further in development than the others? It took Sony 4 years to do the same thing. Not to speak of all the other things that the Wii have made to enhance the gaming experience. And since when have the best console been the fastest and the one with the best performance to generate the best graphics? When did graphics get prioritised over gameplay? The Wii sold more that the others without having awesome graphics for the most part.

But the only ones that buy the Wii are families and the ones who were swept away by the initial wow-factor!
The thing that the Wii did that is amazing is that it made gaming into something that wasn't just for the "Nerd" but a socially accepted hobby. Just like Nintendo always have done, I mean, how many of you didn't have a Nintendo Entertainment System when you were kids? With Wii, and at some fault of the guys at Harmonix, gaming is a bigger phenomenon than ever before, so big that neither of the consoles has sold even near bad. And the so-called initial wow-factor was 5 almost years ago, and last year, the Wii still sold more that the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3.

What I want to see from the Wii, is an updated console, with support for HD and with a HDD, still at the same price. I love the Wii. I love the fact that you can play with one hand, resting your head on, while holding the nunchuck, and be just as relaxed with the other. So don't judge the Wii, because it might not appeal to you, the hardcore-gamer. Sad but true, we're not the main focus of the industry anymore, an industry right now ruled by Nintendo.