LONG POST BUT - GAMESRADER CONSPIRACY THEORY ON NINTENDOS WIN - Very entertaining and certainly plausable theory regarding Kid Icarus, SSBB, the 3DS and how "it was planned years ago".
Nintendo has won E3. Fact. And the real Nintendo is back. But the big N's glorious E3 victory wasn't just a case of unveiling a powerful new handheld and some brilliant-looking core franchise games. There was a lot more at play than that.
So now that I've stopped reeeling from all of last night's conference excitement (okay, so I still am, but I can at least write in sentences now), I've decided to pull things apart, bit by bit, to look at exactly how Nintendo pulled it off. Trust me, the more I think about this, the more it seems to be the crescendo of a whole series of fiendish long and short-term plots. Starting with...
The old bait-and-switch
Nintendo are clever bastards. Fiendish, Machiavellian, very clever bastards. They’d segued into the casual market. They’d learned how hard it is to keep your hardcore fanbase happy when doing that. They’d seen that their biggest two rivals were about to do the same thing with very similar consequences. The best move Ninty could make? Turn back into their old selves with a slew of ‘proper’ Nintendo games and provide a refuge for all the hardcore gamers MS and Sony were about to disenfranchise.
It’s the sharp, one-step-ahead thinking that’s typified Nintendo since Iwata took over. Nintendo saw the potential of the casual market before everyone else, and now that (I suspect) they're seeing its limitations, the big N are getting out before their two rivals over-saturate it to death. The fact is, whatever Reggie says on the face of it, the casual market is fad-driven and has no brand loyalty. Whether by a fear of its distraction by MS and Sony’s shiny new toys, the knowledge that the market can’t sustain three motion controllers with the essentially the same game line-up, both, or even more, Nintendo have spotted that the time is right to get out, and are doing it in the cleverest way possible and a good deal richer.
'Leaks'
Nintendo are famously the most watertight company in the industry when it comes to E3 announcements. But in the run up to this year’s show, we got three major leaks. The 3DS’ capabilities were revealed. Retro Studios’ Donkey Kong Country was outed. We found out about Goldeneye Wii. Three big deals, three keystones in Nintendo’s make-up letter to the hardcore. And Ninty just let them slip by accident? It’s possible, I suppose…
Surprises
If you want a memorable E3, you need to bring the surprises. Whatever the rest of your line-up, unexpected additions are what really matters at an event this big. Have a great conference with a completely expected line-up, and you’ll be forgotten by the time everyone hits the bar (1.38 minutes on average). Throw in a few curveballs, and that bar will be toasting you all night.
DKC, Kirby, Goldeneye, Resident Evil, Super Street Fighter IV, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Metal Gear Sold 3, Driver, Shin Megami Tensei, Starfox, Mario Kart, Ridge Racer, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Super Monkeyball, Sonic, Assassin’s Creed, Saints Row, Kingdom Hearts, PES, Pilotwings… Between the Wii and 3DS, Nintendo churned out surprise games to rival the total numbers of everything mentioned at their competitors’ conferences. And while we’re on the subject…
The Kid Icarus factor
It is no coincidence that Nintendo are launching – and chose to reveal – the 3DS with a new Kid Icarus game. It’s a very clever, calculated move. Super Smash Bros. Brawl came out two and a half years ago, and immediately resparked huge fan interest in Pit. The 3DS was being developed six months before that. The new Kid Icarus’ development is being led by the same man who directed Super Smash Bros Brawl, at a new dev team set up just after Brawl was released. Do you see what’s going on here?
There’s a reason Nintendo seemed to ignore fan pleas for a new Icarus for so long. They were saving it for the launch of the new machine, knowing full-well that the wait would just make their fan-pleasing conference that much of a bigger deal, and make their fan-pleasing, hardcore-specced handheld that much more welcome. All things considered, it’s even plausible to theorise that a tactical turn away from the casual at this stage, and in this manner, was always part of a long-term plan.
The glory years resumed
Look at Nintendo’s own Wii and 3DS games. They’re nothing if not a happy acknowledgement of their hardcore fans’ favourite era. DKC, Kid Icarus and the stunningly-presented, brilliantly inventive new Kirby game are all about the old NES and SNES pride (it can be no co-incidence that the latter puts us weirdly in mind of the first time we saw Yoshi’s Island), while Goldeneye, Zelda: The Skyward Sword, Ocarina of Time and Starfox are all about the N64. And Pilotwings is both (another 'ignored' fan plea explained?).
It’s a classic, ‘proper’ Nintendo E3 line-up that makes you forget that the casual years ever happened. And in this re-ackowledgement of its hardcore fans’ importance, it’s exactly what Nintendo needed to bring. Also, notice the lack of gormless casual gamer footage. And notice that the conference’s presenter line-up was stripped back to the classic, fan-pleasing trio of Reggie, Miyamoto and Iwata. No Cammie Dunaway required.
Spectacle (but no glasses)
Forget ice cream vans. If you want a memorable sight to stick in the minds of journos and fans for years after an E3, you send a seemingly infinite parade of booth babes through your audience to provide instant post-announcement hardware demos. You keep the lights dim, so that the glow from the screens creates an ever expanding trail of light through the auditorium.
You enigmatically raise Zelda podiums out of the ground and let people start to play as the conference is ending. You set them up in a row across the stage to make them look striking, but you make sure there are few enough to generate images of huge queues to get on them. In short, you chroreograph an almost religious set of imagery, execute it with a warm, evangelistic tone, and make sure that everyone knows your company has been reborn as its old self again. And then, you win E3.
source - http://www.gamesradar.com/f/e3-2010-winning-e3-exactly-how-nintendo-did-it/a-20100616112651385025/p-2
