So Nintendo dropped the big one. But lets talk about the start of the conference first. It started with the celebration of the 25th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda, and might I say it was amazing. I’m a Zelda fanboy so ofcourse I wet my shorts seeing the orchestra playing classic Zelda songs with Miyamoto dancing about like a 9 year old. 2011 is looking to be a big year for Zelda as Miyamoto announced 4 Zelda titles this year. Ofcourse we already knew about Ocarina 3DS (next week baby!!) and Skyward Sword but the FREE(!) Four Swords DSI title was a nice touch along with announcing Links Awakening coming to the e-shop that same day. And finally announced was the world wide Zelda concerts being performed by full orchestras :O
After the Zelda extravaganza came the unveiling of these titles:
• Mario Kart 3D
• Starfox 64 3D
• Super Mario 3D
• Kid Icarus: Uprising
• Luigi’s Mansion 2
We already knew about these titles apart from one so it was pretty much filler mostly. Luigi’s Mansion 2 was good to see for 3DS and I’m even more pleased that it isn’t a remake but a full fledged sequel as pretty much every title on the 3DS’s horizon looks like a remake.
After all of this came Iwata and the announcement of the Wii-U. I think the whole world had a collective thought of REALLY?!! But after the console was unveiled the reason for the name began to make more sense (slightly). The controller has a built in screen which via wireless technology streams images and information from the TV/Wii-U box all without latency. You can even use the built in screen as your main screen if say for instance your mum wants to watch Loose Women or something on the tv. Sounds pretty awesome on paper and its seems to have been getting positive praise from people playing it at E3.
Oh and did I mention it was HD? But no technical specs have been announced so it even could be more powerful than a PS3 , highly doubt it though.
Finally its fully backwards compatible with Wii software and was even shown playing Wii-Fit and Wii – Sports along with new features due to the new controller. Ultimately its success will depend on 3rd party support and although all the big guys like EA and Ubisoft pledged to fully support it with big titles we will just have to wait and see if they deliver on this as they totally didn’t with the Wii.
I wont go into much more detail but the world did explode when it saw this, so I think Nintendo won the popularity war at E3, but then again anybody would if they announced a new console. I think Nintendo may just have “won” E3 but only just.
Think il do a recap later of all 3 of the big players at E3 2011 and then decide who I think had the most successful showing.
