Topic: What did you think of the Nintendo Direct in relation to the Wii U?

yeah, the problem is exactly that game announcements don't sell consoles - actual releases do. That's why I was hoping for something more substantial to get released during March/April/May - maybe nothing that would blow us out of the water, but at least something to pass the time, like Hyrule Warriors (I don't think they are so delusional to think HW is going to be a smash hit). Same for Yarn Yoshi. People need to know they bought a console that is going to get constant support, otherwise they'll regret the purchase, Zelda or no Zelda.

We're all hoping for E3, but they have to pull out some aces to release 2 to 6 months after June, much like they did in 2010 with Goldeneye, Other:M, Donkey Kong, NBA Jam which all got released a quarter year after E3. Even if they announce a new Zelda but set the release to late 2015, it's going to be worthless.

Oh I see what you're going for. I would agree with that

No doubt 3DS as the main focus. In terms of new game announcements, Wii U got NES Remix 2 while 3DS got Steel Diver: Subwars, Pokemon Battle Troize, and some baseball game. It seems that though Nintendo will still support Wii U, 3DS will remain their primary focus.

I also think Nintendo is trying to rebrand themselves from a kid-friendly company towards a more "hardcore" "adult gaming" company while at the same time keeping their family options open.
X, Bayonetta, and Steel diver look like they're going for a more ps4/xbone style.
rusy's baseball is definitely the outlier and seems to show that nintendo isn't ready to give up their family friendly audience. However, I wouldn't be surprised to see more "adult atmosphere games" like Starfox, Metroid, F-Zero, and other non-mario franchises. These games won't individually move units, but they'll move units as a whole by making nintendo not seem like a 1-trick pony.

It's not simply that the games were spoiled, it's that the games didn't do anything exciting. People were expecting new, exciting games that showed the power of the Gamepad and were disappointed when they revealed vanilla sequels that failed to differentiate the Wii U from its predecessors. That wouldn't have changed if they hadn't told us that which franchises were getting new games.

Fast forward to the present, we still don't have those new, exciting games, and the Wii U is suffering because of it. Waiting until E3 to reveal them is foolish because the longer they wait, the more people will ignore the Wii U. And since they're supposed to announce that QOL platform this year, they don't need to hoard all of the surprises until E3. That's not to say they should lay all of their cards on the table, but at least one surprise before E3 wouldn't hurt.

@Bolt_Strike
I totally agree with you there's no reason to reveal it all but they should have given us a reason to get excited. Waiting until E3 which is basically halfway through the year is a really bad idea.
They revealed new trailers, but they were new trailers of previously announced games that we already knew were coming to the Wii U and we've been waiting on since last year so yeah... Also by the looks of it X doesn't look like it's going to come out this year since Iwata made it sound like they barely managed to scrape up some gameplay for us. MK just needs to come out already Nintendo needs it.

A bit underwhlemed at first but than I realized I don't own a Wii U, meaning there's a big backlog of games ready to be played by me, that paired with my 3DS and 360 should me good until the next gen only games start to hit late this year. Still I can understand why some would be mad as hell.

I don't know what all the fuss is about. I loved the Direct. Everything looked great, and there were plenty of games coming out on the eShop to carry me to at least mid-April. I was excited for everything up until X, which may be good, but everyone knows that there's nothing more boring than watching someone else play an RPG. If you aren't playing it, yourself, it's kind of a waste of time, really. Not even a fun one.

I'm super hyped for Little Mac in Smash. Kirby and Yoshi officially have my attention. The eShop will be pulling me in, for the majority of the gap. And between the 3DS games coming out from the end of February to the beginning of May, I really won't have much room to complain, other than the fact that I won't have any money to buy all these games.

As for the Wii U's representation in this, I did notice it was kind of lacking, but I honestly don't care. We already knew there wouldn't be any AAA titles during that gap. If you can't keep yourself entertained off the eShop, though, with all that awesomeness coming to it, then I'm afraid you've lost me. The question, now, is what comes after Mario Kart?

Also, I see people complaining about Bayo 2 and X not having release dates. Do try to keep in mind that these are not in-house. Nintendo can't speed these up or slow these down like they could first party titles. Platinum will take their time to make Bayo 2 as good as they can, and Monolith doesn't appear to be very far in the development of X, so you're basically complaining about things that can't be helped. We'll know when Bayo 2 is gonna launch when it's actually soon.

Why exactly does it matter that Nintendo didn't announce new titles? Anything new announced(from now until E3) won't be coming until September(at best) or later.

If they announce a new Metroid game for Wii U at E3 are people not going to buy it since they didn't announce in the February Nintendo Direct?

I get that people built things up in their head but Nintendo once again said what the focus would be on: 3DS/Wii U games for the spring 2014. That is what they did. Did they have more 3DS stuff? Yes, but that is because there are more 3DS games coming out these next 3 months. Lets wait until E3 to see Nintendo's fall/winter Wii U lineup before freaking out over Nintendo giving up on the console.

Why do you people keep justifying Nintendo with this "Spring Games" thing? There's only one bloody game being retail released this spring!! How is it "focused on spring games" if there's only one WiiU spring game?!? FFS

All I'm seeing is the typical after ND blues of users that set their expectations way too high... 3DS = more crappy kiddie focused games and Wii U = indie, 1st & 3rd parties taking my money again this year

@UGXwolf
What eShop games are coming then? All I saw were Child of Light on the last day of April, Shovel Knight on the last day of March, and NES Remix 2 in-between.

Ever thought that maybe they held back because on the new info of the reaction to how they did it last year? Last year's first Direct of the year they showed Wind Waker HD and announced basically all of the unannounced games for the end of the year. The only thing they left for E3 was DK. Then once they hit E3 and that was all they had the press were all "meh, we knew about this already".

Plus the people complaining about the ND and the alleged lack of games pre-E3. Those same people were raving about last year's Direct, we all were. We also would have killed for just one of DK and Kart in the same time period last year. We probably would have even settled for NES Remix 2.

Isn't Scram Kitty slated for March sometime? That game looks sweet.

Overall I was mixed on the ND. I loved seeing all the updates (Little Mac, "X", Bayo 2, GBA VC, etc.) but disappointed that nothing new (or heck even old like Yarn Yoshi or SMT X FE) was really covered...at all. Nintendo needs to "WOW" people right now, not just tell us what we already know.

Yeah, Super Mario 3D World was not a big reveal back at E3 or anything.

They announced at last year's January Direct that they would have Kart, Smash and a "3D Mario game" at E3. Most of the reaction they got to it from the Nintendo centric press was "oh, this isn't Super Mario Galaxy 3. You said all this already, where's Metroid?"

@skywake: Oh ok, I forgot that they mentioned that in that ND.

As I recall there was a screen that showed a bunch of game logos of games coming to the Wii U eShop, and the GBA VC is coming to Wii U eShop. There may be some surprise DS games, though I'm not sure how far along they are in that, and there was also 1001 Spikes and Scram Kitty and his Buddy On Rails. None of this comes anywhere near DKCTF or MK8, but really, you can't expect a massive release like that every month. It's just unrealistic, given Nintendo's situation.

Oh, that was for Spring releases. Okay, that makes things a bit better. Doesn't change the hardware situation, and I haven't heard too much of most of those, but 1001 Spikes is great, and Shovel Knight and Scram Kitty look promising.

Honestly, I don't think Nintendo was going for the bomb dropping approach like they did in the 1.23.13 Nintendo Direct, but rather they went for more of an update approach, since the whole direct was based around previous announcements and unreleased Japanese games on 3DS. Having said this, I firmly believe that people are overreacting to the lack of new announcements, especially new announcements for Wii U games given Nintendo's current situations, but guys, think about it: it's not like Nintendo could slap together a triple-A game, and make a trailer for it only a month after they revealed the dismal sale records for Wii U. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if in March or April Nintendo released a ND that focused on announcing software for Wii U that'll wow us like we all were back in January last year. Call me optimistic if you want, but I saw this direct not as a way for Nintendo to wow us with new, exciting games, but rather to help hype previously announced ones. Really the only game that was announced was NES Remix 2, and that's super small scale and it clearly wasn't intended to be the system seller like too many people were expecting Nintendo to announce. What we got was a good old hype train for Smash, MK8, X, Bayonetta 2, and a couple 3DS games to look forward to soon, no surprise reveals for new games or anything like that, just Ninty giving us some more info on games that most of us are looking forward to play. And in the end, is that really such a bad thing to do?