Nintendo’s Response to E3 Critics Awards

Beth Llewelyn, senior director of public relations for Nintendo, sounds pretty happy this afternoon and it’s not the weather. Nintendo nabbed five awards from the Game Critics for its performance at E3. “We’re very pleased and very excited,” Llewelyn said at Nintendo’s success at the trade show. Nintendo’s Wii was named Best of Show and Best Platform, while Wii Sports grabbed Best Sports Game honors and Excite Truck picked up Best Racing Game kudos. The other Zelda game at the show, The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass was named the Best Handheld game by journalists.Despite these successes, however, Nintendo isn’t resting on their laurels — they can’t afford to. They have a console launch steadily approaching and a slew of information to release between now and then, not to mention some things to improve on in the wake of E3 2006. “E3 is just a small blip in time,” Lleweleyn said. “Work is really cut out for us now going forward. E3 reaches our core, and from the beginning we’ve said that the Wii is about getting to that demographic outside of people who play games on a daily basis.” This week’s Touch Generations announcement is a small version of how Nintendo may plan to brand some “casual” IPs going forward. Surely, the Wii will need more than just the core franchises from Nintendo in order to succeed in the way Nintendo wants to.For those who put stock in “Best of” lists beyond a feather in a company’s hat, Nintendo being named “Best Hardware” might serve up a plate of crow to Nintendo haters. Llewleyn laughs: “I didn’t say it that way, but yes, we’re obviously pleased that our hardware is being recognized. We feel in order to go forward in this industry we have to take gaming in a new direction and so far people seem to be on board with that.”

Just because Nintendo enjoyed some critical success though, doesn’t mean that the company is getting too full of themselves, Llewelyn acknowledged that Nintendo had to continue to court third-party developers and get them to innovate on the Wii.. She describes third-party developers that Nintendo met with at E3 as “excited” to work with the platform.

Equally as important to Nintendo as solidifying third and first-party development is getting the Wii positioned to succeed in America. In order to do so, Llewelyn and Nintendo recognize that they will have to change the way consumers are used to being marketed to. While there was no talk of new generation versus next generation, this time, Nintendo recognizes that Americans are used to bigger, badder versions being successors. In films its sequelitis — like the latest Mission Impossible film, Nintendo is banking that it can be an alternative to the “now with more power” versions of its competitors consoles. But in order for that to happen, they will have to find a way to change the reactions of Americans to its product. The “bigger and badder” visuals are found elsewhere — and Nintendo is fine with that. They plan to counter Microsoft and Sony with a different strategy: “Whether its playing with the controller or watching someone play with the system and thinking ‘Wow that looks fun’ — we have got a lot of work to do,” Llewelyn said. “We have to convey that it’s not about who has the prettiest pictures,” and that will require U.S. gamers to think outside the box.

Llewelyn was expectedly evasive on the announcements Nintendo still has to make regarding the Wii: How will the system be packaged? How will Wii24 work? What exactly will the virtual console do? When will the console ship? What is the price point? Will the Wiimote be sold separately and at what cost? “These are all announcements we’re still debating on what to make and when internally,” Llewelyn said. “We didn’t want to play our whole hand at E3, obviously we want to keep some things back.”
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