E3's a coming...

Next week sees the start of this year’s E3, the premium video game trade show that allows the industry to showcase what they have coming up for the year ahead. Over the years, the press conferences in particular that run the days before the show official starts, have seen many shocks and surprises as the major platform holders demonstrate their new hardware or games.

This year however, things are altogether a bit more muted. Microsoft and Sony are not expected to make any big announcements as the console cycle is coming to an end and neither company is ready to show anything of their new systems. Also company's traditional stick to tried and tested formula as the console cycle winds down, so we are unlikely to see any surprise game announcements with publishers holding back most things for the next generation. This leaves it up to Nintendo to provide the surprises, with the Wii U set to get its full unveiling along with perhaps a price and launch date. 

When the Wii U was initially announced I was pretty sceptical. Whilst I had been excited about what the Wii meant for the industry, the terrible banality of a lot of the software produced, and a couple of lean years from Nintendo themselves, meant that I had lost a bit of faith in Nintendo and doubted whether they could produce another top level system. However as E3 approaches I find my excitement growing, I’ve always had a soft spot for Nintendo and I admire what they try to do with home consoles. The industry would certainly be a worse place if they did a Sega and just concentrated on software.

For me this excitement over what Nintendo is going to announce is what E3 is all about. Gaming is meant to be exciting and E3 can deliver that in spades, it’s just a shame that there is very little prospect of surprises this year. 

Regarding the show itself though it is good to see E3 getting back to where it belongs. A few years ago, during the financial crisis, people were questioning the need for such an expensive trade show, something I think they was wrong. Yes to an extent E3 had become overblown and companies were spending far too much money on the show, but the show gives the industry a unique platform to publicise their wares to the wider, mainstream media; people who don’t come to preview events and only really cover gaming when it is deemed newsworthy i.e. X game has been linked to Y violent act. This in turn gets gaming into the public conscience and portrays the industry in a positive light. Every major entertainment media has their marquee event and this is ours, without it, as an industry, we would be diminished. 

So while publishers, games journalists and developers bemoan having to spend a week in LA rushed off their feet, I will be rejoicing in all that E3 brings, hoping for that major surprise and thankful that we have such an event in the first place.

The Nintendo 3DS, more like the Nintendo £DS.

Figures coming out of Japan today show that the Nintendo 3DS has set another sales record. This one is relating to the time it has taken for the machine to sell through five million units. The previous record was held by the DS at 56 weeks and before that the GBA at 58 weeks. According to Japanese site Adriasang the 3DS managed the feat in just 52 weeks.

It has certainly been some turn-around for Nintendo’s latest handheld. Only a few months ago experts were lining up to declare that the handheld market had moved on, that Apple’s way of doing things was what customers preferred, and that game-orientated handhelds were doomed. A price-cut and a deluge of great titles later and the 3DS is consistently breaking sales records–shows how much the supposed experts know.

Personally I never subscribed to the belief that the public were happy playing games on their phones and were not looking for a dedicated portable games machine. After all while Apple and Android were having a great deal of success in the download market, whilst smartphones were flying off the shelves and Angry Birds was being downloaded over 200 million times, people were still buying DS consoles and games. So it wasn’t like the market for a DS style handheld had disappeared.

There is also the fact that the 3DS wasn’t really a failure when it was launched. Between the launch of the system on the 26^th of February and September 30^th the console shifted 6.68m units compared to the original DS, which managed 6.65m over the same timeframe. The trouble was that due to the massive subsequent sales of the DS the 3DS was always going to be judged unfairly. It’s the same problem that the successor to the Wii will no doubt have. It is very rare for a console to launch and then reach the kind of numbers that the Wii and the DS were doing during their height. It is accepted fact that it takes a couple of years before a console reaches its sales peak. With the 3DS it seems that the industry expected it to be a blockbuster out of the gate and when it wasn’t they were quick to call it a failure.

True, Nintendo did make some mistakes with the launch, chief of which was that it didn’t have a great slate of games available for it, but then that has been true of most console launches. More importantly was that they didn’t manage to get across the message to the public that this was a new console rather than just another DS with 3D added. The price was also probably a little off; they perhaps should have sold it for around £229.99, but I’m not sure it was such a significant factor.

I do think though that the media were too quick to jump on the 3DS and call it a failure and this is a problem with our media as a whole. Nothing is given time anymore. You have to be able to launch and be an instant success, if you don’t then prepare to be called a failure, something which quickly becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy–as no-one buys your machine as they think it is a failure due to what the press has said. This puts incredible pressure on anyone looking to launch a new product, be it a home console or a handheld system. Expectations are being set way too high and when those expectations aren’t hit the condemnation is swift and vicious. It’s damaging to the industry and something that needs to change.

I’m glad that Nintendo were able to prove the doomsayers wrong, but it was only their deep pockets that allowed them to combat the negative press with a sharp price-cut that was able to combat the furore over whether the console was a failure. Without that pressure from the press I think the 3DS would have gone on to have a good Christmas and going into 2012 would have been able to follow the traditional path of a console launch and reduce its price accordingly. All the press managed to do was push that chain forward a bit and make themselves look silly in the process.

Next time I think we should wait before pronouncing the death of a product, especially a Nintendo one. You would have thought that the media would have learned their lesson after what was said about the original DS and Wii when they were first announced. However it seems whilst the media is quite prepared to make swift judgements, it’s a little slower when it comes to learning from its mistakes. 

Oh Zelda, Zelda, wherefore art thou Zelda?

I think it's apt that for the title of this blog I have adapted a classic Shakespeare line as you could argue that the Legend of Zelda series has had a similar impact on gaming as Shakespeare has had on literature. The various merits to this argument are maybe best saved for another blog, but suffice it to say my first experience with the world of Zelda was not unlike my first experience of the Bard.

Enough blather lets get to the crux of this blog posting. Whilst I will always revere the Zelda series for its fairytale story, stunningly realised worlds and quirky characters I currently find myself troubled. Since The Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening on the SNES I have played and adored every Zelda home console release. Whether it was a console defining game such as Ocarina of Time, an interesting oddity like Majora's Mask or a new direction in the case of Wind Waker, I have enjoyed each and every one. Each game has been hurriedly put into the console and devoured with gusto. Skyward Sword has suffered an all together different fate. You see  for the first time in the series I have found myself not enjoying myself whilst playing and this has to a certain degree horrified me.

You see there is just something about the game that wont sit right. All the usual goodness is there: a beautiful world; interesting characters; challenging dungeons; a malevolent evil that must be vanquished; and for the first time Nintendo have sought to develop the relationship between Link and Zelda. I should be hurrying home each day from work keen to continue my adventure to save fair maiden and the world.  Yet...

Something is missing. At first I thought it was a mainly down to my problem with the heavily integrated motion control. In general I'm a fan of motion control having enjoyed thrashing Rafael Nadal in Grand Slam Tennis, been beaten by my sister at Wii Bowling and rejoiced at the brief resurgence of the light gun genre. I didn't even mind the motion control that was crowbarred into Twilight Princess. So I had high hopes for the sword combat in Skyward Sword and to start with these hopes were met as I dispatched logs with precise strikes. However once I transfered these moves to combat things became a little trickier as some of my movements were not registered and Deku Babas started to munch at my health bar. Things became worse as I faced off against the final boss. As I tried to swipe in the opposite direction to which he was defending I found the Wiimote unwilling to interpret my motions correctly like a nagging spouse who insists that their way is the best way. 'A strike from the right? I think you mean a strike from the left,' the Wiimote seemed to say. Eventually I ended up just thrashing the controller around wildly in desperation. I'm sure anyone watching would have had a good laugh, but it was hardly conducive to an enjoyable experience. On reflection the Wiimote might have needed recalibrating, but I couldn't find an option to do so from the in game options. Once I had defeated the boss I made sure to save my progress, turned the game off and I have had no inclination to turn it on since.

So the erratic behaviour of Wii Motion Plus was what initially put me off playing any more of the game. But on further reflection whilst the motion malfunction wasn't fun I don't think that is the main reason for my reluctance to play. There were other nagging thoughts that had been at the back of my mind and had started to make their way to the surface. Why was the pace of the game so slow, why did it feel like I was playing with training wheels on, and what was with the AI companion Fi. I felt like I was adventuring with a Hollywood Blockbuster writer with an annoying habit of feeling they had to spell every single thing out to me at every turn like I was some kind of child. And then it hit me...child.

Now Nintendo are known for their ability to appeal to generation after generation with their games and always being able to find an audience that is predominantly on the younger side of life. In the past this has never bothered me, but with the Wii there is an added problem. For the first time since the original Legend of Zelda Nintendo is making a Zelda game that the majority of its customers will have never played. I don't know whether this was at the forefront of their minds whilst developing Skyward Sword, but it certainly feels like they believed they had to go out of their way to make sure anyone who picked up this latest Zelda would get a good introduction to the series and at no point would they feel lost.

Having made this realisation everything about what I had played began to make sense. The 3 minute long unskippable video that played at the beginning of the game explaining how to take the Wii Motion Plus attachment on and off, the left hand side of the screen being partially obscured by a button layout guide, the interminably slow pace, and the incessant nagging Fi.

It was this simplification of the series that had really driven me away, the malfunctioning motion control hadn't helped, but for the first time I felt that Nintendo weren't making Zelda games for me any more. Have I finally grown out of my love for all things Ninty or has the company just moved on to a new audience? It's hard to tell right now, I enjoyed Mario Galaxy so I can still enjoy some of the games they make. I don't think I will be able to make a proper judgment until I see the way they plan to go with their next console, but after years of defending Nintendo against the complaints that they were pandering to the masses with the Wii I have more of an idea of where those people were coming from.

I'm sad that it has taken one of my favourite gaming series to make me realise that I might have finally out grown Nintendo. As it stands I'm not even sure I will bother with their next console, sticking instead with my PC and the next Xbox and if you had sat 17-year-old me down and told him that one day he would be considering no longer purchasing Nintendo products he would have given you a look of disdain and turned back to his N64.