After an underwhelming performance at gaming’s biggest event, Nintendo executives have released statements addressing the criticisms.
[toggler title=”TL;DR” ]Iwata and Miyamoto said that Nintendo was more focused on games that were going to come out this year rather the games coming out further in the future. They both recognized that fans were disappointed and hoped that fans would understand their reasoning behind everything.[/toggler]
[dropcap size=small]A[/dropcap]t last month’s E3 2015, Nintendo made some promising announcements about future projects but many were disappointed in the lack of news at the panel. In a recent shareholder meeting that took place in the beginning of the month, president of Nintendo Satoru Iwata and managing director Shigeru Miyamoto responded to some of the criticisms of the company’s lineup of games.
Miyamoto explained that many of the games that were shown at E3 would have a “direct effect on our business in the near term.” He went on to say that this was a similar approach to last year’s E3 where Nintendo announced/demoed Wii U games that were very early in development.
“Since we mainly included the software that would be released before the end of this year, the entire software lineup appeared to be small,” he said. “And because we did not include a number of third-party titles, we must’ve ended up giving people the impression that not so many titles will be released on our platforms in future.”
Miyamoto added that since they only presented games that would be released either later this year or early next year, they had failed to excite fans with new games that would be released further in the future. He said that although they did not have many future projects to present, this allowed Nintendo fans to see what games they would only have to wait a few months for. Miyamoto went on to say that this differed from both Sony and Microsoft as both companies had many games that were only presented visual art, instead of with playable demos.
“Other than Nintendo, the major hardware manufacturers, Sony and Microsoft, also had booths, and I got the general impression that they were showcasing not only the products for this year but also many products for next year or the year after and, because of that, introductions for many of their software titles were done visually, not with playable demos,” he said.
Virtual reality was also brought up in the meeting and Miyamoto said that these products are set to be released in the next two or three years, further strengthening his point of Nintendo wanting to show off content that would be released in the near future.
Satoru Iwata expressed a similar opinion to Miyamoto’s about the E3 lineup.
“We recognize that we have let down a number of the online viewers of this year’s E3, especially the avid Nintendo fans, because we did not show what they had expected,” he said.
“On the other hand, since E3 was originally a U.S. trade show, when we consider what kind of messages we should dispatch and in what fashion, while we have to take into consideration the impression that we may give to people outside the U.S., we have been very mindful about how we can maximize our immediate business in the U.S. this year.”
The big games that Nintendo presented included Super Mario Maker, Yoshi’s Woolly World, Legend of Zelda: Triforce Heroes, Star Fox Zero, Mario Tennis Ultra Smash, Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice, and Metroid Prime Federation, which received the most grief from fans as the game will not even include Metroid heroine Samus Aran.
