You said go ahead and email you, because you’re interested in reactions to the news from E3, and I have a few thoughts which I haven’t seen brought up elsewhere, so I figured I’d do just that. These will be over a few different things… I’ll try to organize them a bit.
Skyward Sword:
This report about what was said at Nintendo’s E3 briefing was amusing to me, specifically toward the middle of the page, right above the Skyward Sword screenshot:
– Aonuma says that recent Zeldas have been focusing on things like story and dungeons. Skyward will instead focus on “fun”.
Sounds like whether or not it is true, they’re trying to convince the Malstroms of the world that this game is actually for you. Also:
It sounds like Zelda Wii has undergone a total upheaval from last year. Last year, Zelda was supposed to ‘not have a sword’ but now the game is about the ‘Skyward Sword’? Something very interesting is going on here.
– While the game is now nearly finished, with only a few more dungeons and bosses to go, Nintendo want to give the development team the rest of the year to complete the game. Which makes it sound like a 2011 game.
Why, again? It does seem like they’re trying to change direction a bit on this already-complete game and make it do a little more to appease Malstrom, though of course that may be wrong, and even if it isn’t, it’s doubtful they could really achieve that goal without starting a new game from scratch. So I agree that the Zelda after this will be the one to watch.
It has nothing to do about the ‘Malstroms’. I think it has everything to do about Zelda being in decline. They need to do something different.
I’m taking back about what I said about the ‘Zelda after’ being the one to watch. It appears Nintendo doesn’t feel like ‘dumping’ whatever Aonuma was working on to the market and are doing a complete overhaul of it. Skyward Sword could be the Zelda we’ve been waiting for.
Sony:
I love this quote from Kaz Hirai:
What the PS did for BluRay, it is ready to do for 3D.
Seriously? Blu-Ray has been a block of cement around the ankles of the PS3 since it launched, and now their next bright idea is to attach a ship anchor to it as well in the form of 3D TV…
Sony is so funny.
DKC4:
Awesome! I remember excitedly going out to buy Donkey Kong 64 because I’d had so much fun renting the Donkey Kong Country games and playing them with friends. Just like Mario 64 was not a Mario game, Donkey Kong 64 was not Donkey Kong Country. But now it’s finally back!
DKC4 is very exciting to see.
3DS:
The only game systems I’ve gotten on day 1 have been the Wii and the PSP (the latter turned out to be a mistake). I want a 3DS on day one. When I first heard about it, I thought it would signal Nintendo abandoning disruption; 3D sounded like a sustaining innovation to me. Then Malstrom came along and said that no, it would be disruptive; the disruption literature points out that for most technological innovations it is possible to package them into a form which is sustaining or one which is disruptive. For example Nintendo’s use of motion controls is disruptive while Sony’s is sustaining… and Nintendo’s use of 3D is disruptive while Sony’s is sustaining.
That’s why I felt happy when I read this:
…I started off the cutscene with the 3DS resting on the table, but in my hands. It was a bit further away from my face then it typically would be when playing. The impact was horrendous. It felt like I had gone permanently cross eyed. It made my stomach flop slightly and my eyes quickly tried to correct what they were seeing. I used the slider on the face of the 3DS to turn the 3D down but it didn’t help. They I tried moving the 3DS slightly closer and suddenly the game’s images synched and the world was amazingly deep.
I tried putting the screen even closer to my face, moving it way too close and the image went double again. Tilting the 3DS or moving it to either side made the image fuzzy.
There is, I learned, a 3D sweet-spot for the 3DS, a bubble in which the image is perfect and deep. Outside the bubble things go wrong.
Plus the cameras are only 640 x 480 resolution? Sounds like a disruptive product to me! (“Crappy product for a crappy customer” in the eyes of the “industry.”) It’s good enough: apparently this disruptive innovation is so compelling that even the big third parties who love nothing more than making hardcore games are scrambling to make games for it, if the list of games slated for the system is any indicator. Which is awesome! There are quite a few series on the list I already know I enjoy. Plus it plays all the DS games I already have.
I’m quite interested to see if any games will really take advantage of the way it handles wireless connectivity and interactions (they say it can even exchange data for a game when you have it asleep and with a different game in it).
So now I’m wondering about price and release date. I’m guessing about $180 in November. What do you think?
Thanks for your time and the opportunity to voice my thoughts. : )
Did you note the comments Reggie made about 3d gaming about its ‘stupid glasses’ and ‘expensive TVs’? The aim of these jabs was at Sony and their move to 3d. I think it is pretty clear that Nintendo is using the 3DS to disrupt Sony’s 3d move. I am not surprised at all that 3DS can play ‘3d movies’.
Wii was very much a ‘new market’ disruption. 3DS may not be a ‘new market disruption’ but just a ‘low market disruption’ in that Nintendo is content to screw up Sony’s plans. But we’ll see in time.
One funny thing was that I was called by some people a ‘Nintendo fanboy’ or ‘Nintendo apologist’ when I pointed out that 3DS could be disrupting something what Sony is doing, such as moving to 3d gaming with glasses because I mocked Sony’s 3d move before. Now that Nintendo was doing 3d, was I being a hypocrite? I was called that. But those chihuahuas nipping at this site’s heels are eating crow now.
The Era of Consoles Wars is long over. We are now in the Era of Disruption. The Wii was the first disruption. Now we have the 3DS as the follow-up. Sony and Microsoft may try to claim that Move and Kinect are disruptive because they are ‘crappy products for crappy customers’. Well, they got the ‘crappy products’ right, but they aren’t going to get any customers, crappy or otherwise.
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