Iwata Recognises Need For Improved E3 Conference

This years E3 show in Los Angeles was one of the biggest in many years. Not only was the show back to the physical size and capacity of E3 of old, but Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft had some massive announcements at their respective conferences.

While Microsoft wowed crowds with Project Natal and a string of AAA titles and Sony showed of their motion sensing tech along with quality games, Nintendo looked overshadowed by both. True Nintendo had a much better conference than the previous year, but one of the biggest talking points came from a single piece of Zelda artwork which wasn’t officially even supposed to have been shown!

Nintendo president, Satoru Iwata realises that they need to do better in future:

“As for the media briefing at E3, of course we had many internal discussions after that. Honestly speaking, none of us at Nintendo thought that our presentation at E3 was as good as it could have been. It is apparent that we could not fully convey the charm of our products. In the past, Wii Sports and Wii Fit were naturally able to convey their appeal on stage since it was something no one had ever seen or imagined before. People seemed to capture the appeal of Wii Sports instantly and although there was some initial confusion with Wii Fit, its appeal did get through to the audience afterwards.

This year, however, with the New Super Mario Bros. Wii, four people lined up with Wii Remotes was not a scene that no one had ever seen. Those who actually had the chance to play understood how the game would change with four people playing simultaneously, but we could not address that fun sentiment at the media briefing. Now we strongly feel that we need to look into finding a better way to demonstrate the products’ appeal better at E3 in these times where more people are watching it online via web cast not only in the U.S. but all around the world, than the number of audience who actually watch it in the theatre. In that sense, we learned many lessons from this year’s E3 show.

After the media briefing, we had a domestic trade briefing in Japan. There we disclosed the black Wii console and red Nintendo DSi, which made a big buzz among game fans. It is also an important lesson for next year.”

It’s good that the company recognise they were outdone by the competition and it bodes well for a better conference next year. Unfortunately we have quite a wait to find out how well they do.