This year’s E3 represented an opportunity for Nintendo to take back the hardcore with a new console. “Project Cafe” was supposed to be Nintendo’s answer to all of the critics who lambasted the company’s abandonment of the ‘core’. Nintendo took this opportunity and…well…kind of left us scratching our heads.

So here we are again. Yet another publisher fails to clearly articulate its future direction and aspirations to puzzled gamers, stockholders, and critics alike. Nintendo had every opportunity to truly appeal to the hardcore gaming audience, but what we got was a jumbled mess: a new console with no released specifications, a controller that many thought was the console, and a new name that resonates bitterly with Nintendo’s jaded fanbase.

As much as it pains me, Nintendo, this editorial is for your own good. Listen up.

OG: Original Gamer

With the exception of the Virtual Boy, Game Boy Advance and 3DS, I have owned every single Nintendo console. Nintendo has proven over and over that their core franchises are some of the most innovative, complex, and fun on the market. I always had more fun on my Super Nintendo than I did on my Sega Genesis, and my N64 brought some of the best times I’ve ever had gaming with friends. On Christmas in 2001 my brother and I received a Playstation 2 and a Gamecube (my parents were very poor but saved a ton of money for Christmas). I could not believe that we got both systems on the same year. I enjoyed Luigi’s Mansion and Pikmin immeasurably.

Then the fun stopped.

Over the next ten years, I would obtain an Xbox, Wii, and Xbox 360. Every so often I still boot up my PS2, as there is an extraordinary library of great games. I play my Xbox 360 constantly.

I haven’t touched my Wii in about eight months (obligatory masturbation joke), and my Gamecube in years. It seems fewer developers support every new generation of Nintendo consoles, and the fanbase gets a little more wary each time. Sure, Zelda, Metroid, Kirby, and Mario are great, and each game in their respective franchises tends to be a new and different experience (except for Metroid: Other M, of which the less said, the better). But a console cannot stand on first party titles alone.

Many hardcore gamers felt betrayed by the Wii. The vaunted endless possibilities of its motion controls faded quickly as we discovered their limits, and Nintendo quickly focused almost exclusively on casual titles, leaving us gamers with sour tastes in our mouths. While the Wii had better third party support than the Gamecube, it still lacked the blockbuster AAA titles of its powerful rivals, largely due to inferior processing power and the very unorthodox control scheme that had supposedly been a selling point.

Nintendo realized that they weren’t going to please the hardcore market with the Wii, but they promised to change that.

E3 Done Wrong

Fast forward to E3 2011. The lights! The sounds! The terrible Microsoft press conference (FIST BUMP)!

Nintendo has dominated the convention for the last few years with announcements of amazing hardware and incredible advances in key franchises. Last year, Reggie Fils-Aime’s announcement of the 3Ds dazzled the press and gamers alike. He made it a point to demonstrate its capabilities, processing power and stressed a specific direction for the handheld. Nintendo has rarely made a misstep with its hand-helds, and they seem to know how not to oversell them even as they oversold the Wii. This year, they promised a new home console would take center stage.

When the lights dimmed and the video played, the audience was treated to a new device: The Wii-U…controller.

That was a controller that we had seen, right? That wasn’t the console. Or was it? What the hell was that?

These questions echoed the sentiment of the gaming press and the audience at Nintendo’s press conference. While the debut of a new console was alluded to, neither Reggie or Iwata-san bothered to show a picture. Just one paltry image of this magnificent new piece of technology would have been enough to entice the audience, wow the critics and end the confusion. Reggie has since claimed that this console will exceed the capabilities of the current generation of hardware while offering the AAA titles that Sony and Microsoft currently enjoy.

Combine the confusion over the new controller with the supposed appeal to the hardcore and we have press conference that is just…an enigma. The video treated us to the manifold different ways to use the new controller, of course. We saw it’s applications in interacting with the television. We saw it as a (very unwieldy) sniper scope shooting Miis out of windows, as a virtual golf ball that a player swung a Wii-mote club over, and as a fistful of shuriken thrown at trees. Most, intriguing, it promised the ability to have a HUD or menu on the screen, and to stream the game directly to the controller.

Nintendo did a sufficient job of playing up the screen streaming aspect of the device, but that’s all it was. When a next generation Legend of Zelda title was unveiled, however, is when fanboys lost their minds. It showed Link in HD, with the controller screen acting as a typical LoZ menu. It promised the possibility of a truly cinematic experience, but considering the incredible legacy of the Legend of Zelda franchise, it didn’t get nearly the attention it warranted.

Nintendo is certainly satisfying long-time fans with this reveal. But what are they doing to entice new hardcore gamers alienated by Nintendo’s past direction? Reggie’s answer was boasting about third party support. He showed off Batman: Arkham City and Battlefield games destined for the Wii-U, and promised many other developers would be bringing well known franchises to the new console.

The problem with this is that this promise is neither new nor trustworthy. Every single console generation since the Super Nintendo, Nintendo has done exactly this: they have repeatedly made promises of support outside of their flagship titles and have let gamers down every single time.

Innovating In The Wrong Direction

The bottom line for Nintendo is if they want to recapture hardcore gamers’ loyalty again, they need to distance themselves from the Wii brand.

Incorporating this name into a new console screams casual games. If you rewatch the reveal video of the controller again, you’ll see that Nintendo plans plenty of gimmicky uses for this controller, heavily integrating Miis and the Wii-mote. Haven’t we had enough of this?

That Nintendo demonstrated this controller in part by shooting Wii avatars out of a window troubles me. They could have instead gone the extra mile and shown this controller as a tool to help you play against your friends in sports games (which they mentioned but didn’t bother to demonstrate), and more examples of core franchises using this technology.

The limitations of this hardware are also very worrisome. Iwata-san has already stated that the console will only be bundled with one of these new controllers and that no additional ones will be available at launch. It appears that the standard control scheme will be the Wii-mote and nunchuk controllers, something that I feel Nintendo needs to fix. Nintendo could invent a successor to the Gamecube controller that would be miles better than the gimmicky, motion controlled Wii-mote that fits for some games but is incredibly awkward for most others.

I know detractors of what I have written here will say that the technology is very new and that we don’t know a lot about it’s capabilities yet and that Nintendo was just giving us a taste. What I say to that is: bullshit.

Nintendo had every opportunity to demonstrate the advanced tech of the controller, the specs and capabilities of the new console. They had the chance to make a a sincere, coherent, clear appeal to the hardcore gamer crowd. Nintendo nearly failed on all three fronts.

They have essentially made an HD Wii. This will be great for all of the Wii bowling and Nintendogs lovers out there.

For those that raise the point that AAA titles are finally coming to Nintendo, I have to point out: we’ve been promised these sorts of things before. Are you really sure that all of Nintendo’s new ‘innovations’ won’t be again be gimmicky distractions away from a game that gamers just want to play? It’s encouraging that Nintendo is committed to do away with friend codes, and will adopt a more XBL or PSN model for their online capabilities. But Nintendo’s got a spotty track record with online gaming, and they’ve tried to streamline the process multiple times.

And this is precisely my point. We have no idea what Nintendo wants to do with this new console, because they failed to tell us.

Reggie and company alluded to many things that are possible with this new technology, but he didn’t present a clear vision of Nintendo’s new direction. For all the developer testimony, the sum total amounted to multiple devs and publishers repeating, “Oooo, it’s so pretty and shiny and new. It also has a screen! I want my games on that tiny screen!” We don’t have nearly enough public commitments from the majority of publishers out there.

Every developer, every producer, every publisher, always promises the sky in their press releases. That’s what press conferences and public relations are meant to do. It doesn’t mean those promises will pan out.

In order for Nintendo to truly win back the hardcore, they’re going to have to either abandon the Wii brand, or transform our views on the brand’s identity. They need to solidify relationships with publishers who need to demonstrate their IPs running on those tiny screens. They need to get rid of the gimmicky motion controller and need to utilize the screen controller with advancing technology, augmented reality and other technological wonders.

What Nintendo needs to prove to gamers is that they are a company that truly hasn’t forgotten about us.

I love Nintendo, and always have. But as I get older, Nintendo refuses to grow with me. Nintendo is stuck in its awkward teenage experimentation years. And I hope they discover their new identity it before it’s too late.

As always feel free to leave comments below. You can follow me on Twitter @JamesMcCaulley or email me at jmccaulley@pixelatedgeek.com