E3 2013: Batman: Arkham Origins

Nintendo Burned By EA

Nintendo stormed the world in late 2006 with the Wii, a console that sold faster than any console in history and oftentimes in it's early years sold twice the amount per month that the PS3 and Xbox 360 sold combined. But in recent times Nintendo has struggled to gain any traction, oftentimes seeming like an afterthought and scraping by on sub-40K units a month sales in the United States. Numbers that low aren't just bad, they're shockingly bad and usually only seen by aging platforms on their way to retirement. To say the WiiU is struggling is an understatement, it seems more like a case of being stillborn.

In this sad state of affairs for the Big N, who managed to get a decently positive reception at their E3 Nintendo Direct broadcast based on the exclusive titles Bayonetta 2 and X, the wrap up to their E3 week came with EA making a public statement that's certain to cause some corporate hand-wringing. In an interview with CVG, EA Labels president Frank Gibeau had the following to say:

"Gibeau told Joystiq this week that Nintendo must "sell more boxes" for EA to resume full support for the platform."

Also of mention in the article were a number of annual EA sports games, which typically release on as many devices as humanly possible, passing on WiiU this year. This is not a good sign for Nintendo, who is already facing a continual downward revision of their forecasts, has a stagnating handheld market and has a CEO who will likely be forced to live up to his promise of resigning if Nintendo doesn't make their fiscal year goals. At this stage, with third party games support rapidly drying up and industry trendsetters like EA starting the ball rolling on publishers and developers actively making it public knowledge they are abandoning the platform, I think it's only a matter of whether Iwata remains CEO for the full year or resigns his commission early.

Even though I have been a critic of Nintendo in recent years due to their localization failures, their increasingly repetitive game releases, their long droughts of software support on their platforms and their inability to adapt to modern internet fucntionality in regards to online accounts and transactions, it really is sad to see them in this shape. Nintendo was a vital part of my childhood and it's amazing that the company which brought us so many all-time classics now can't figure out how to stop their recently launched platforms from dying on the vine. With exclusives like X and Bayonetta 2, along with the inevitable high definition Legend of Zelda, it would be nice if they could get in touch with the gaming audience at large again, but it seems they are struggling to even comprehend how to begin.

I suspect EA sounding off on dropping support will be a catalyst for more companies to follow suit and begin removing WiiU from their mutliplatform strategies. Hopefully the Big N can turn the momentum around and regain the support of the third party publishers, if for no other reason than to become a worthwhile opponent to the seemingly increasing juggernaut of Sony's Playstation 4 and help insure that good competition will keep Sony from regaining the incredible arrogance they displayed prior to the PS3 launch.

E3 2013: X

E3 2013: Bayonetta 2

The Calm Before the Storm

 

Today is the final day of relative peace and quiet before E3, and for the first time I'm not excited by the prospect of what I'm going to hear. I should be, considering that we have 2 brand new consoles debuting and we have a contender who's not doing so well right now and knows they need to knock it out of the park with killer games to stop the stagnation of their recently launched platform. This should be a grand show with the blockbuster announcements from all those hungry to get a foothold in the hearts and minds of the gaming audience as the new generation descend upon us.

But thanks to the malicious activity of the industry of late I'm filled with dread instead of hope. The WiiU is DRM-free but 3rd parties have all but abandoned the device. Microsoft is going forth with a horrible DRM platform on Xbone that virtually ensures I won't ever own one so long as that software is a "feature". It's still unclear how Sony is proceeding on the DRM front. If Sony advances a DRM scheme similar to Microsoft I may just call it quits on console gaming altogether. Even if they announce that the forever-in-development games The Last Guardian and Final Fantasy Versus XIII, the upcoming Metal Gear Solid 5 and speculated unannounced games like Kingdom Hearts 3 are now being designed for the Playstation 4, I would be hard-pressed to find justification in buying the machine to play them. And yes, if Sony has DRM similar to Xbone on the PS4 they will receive just as much hatred as Microsoft has in my future ranting blog posts.

So we now stand on the eve of E3, with both the Microsoft and Sony conferences happening tomorrow. I find myself wondering, as I did in one of the very first blog posts I wrote here, if the AAA Gaemz Industree™ which is pointing a gun at it's own head will squeeze the trigger and pre-emptively ruin the entire next console generation before it even starts. Is there is anyone coming to their senses before they ruin things? Microsoft can choose to remove the DRM if they want to, Sony can choose to not implement it at all, the question is will they? The ball is now in their court and all we can do is wait. 

The storm is coming my friends, the storm is coming.