What Can Nintendo Say That Will Impress You?

Around E3, I wrote a bit about how I felt kind of sorry for Nintendo. No matter what the company achieves, traditional gamers always seem to be disappointed with any announcement it makes. I dubbed Nintendo as bearing "The Curse of the Gifted Child," if you recall -- overachievers never make their parents happy.

Anyway, at Satoru Iwata's GDC keynote yesterday, (if you follow me on Twitter you caught my N'Gai-inspired liveTweet) his primary objective seemed to be to challenge the most common criticisms of the company: That Nintendo's success only benefits Nintendo; that no one can be successful on its platforms except Nintendo, and that Nintendo has forgotten about its hardcore audience.

Check out the link and see if you think Iwata made a compelling argument to any of those points. What I'm most interested in is that he made a couple major announcements that fans have been waiting for for a long time -- essentially, the things I think people were hoping to hear out of E3. For one, he finally announced an available-immediately storage solution for Wii Ware. Too long in coming, perhaps, but it's finally here.

Second, the longing for Nintendo to announce a new Zelda any time anyone from the company steps foot behind a podium has become so commonplace that it's practically a meme. If I worked at Nintendo, I'd probably want to bean the next person who said "announce a new Zelda" across the face.

Anyway. Iwata actually announced a new Zelda, as I'm sure you've heard by now. They fixed the storage solution! They announced a flippin' Zelda! They're adding hardcore arcade to the Virtual Console! All well, right?

Nope. Everyone I spoke to at those evening festivities was still ho-hum underwhelmed.

I'm not sayin' anyone needs to take to the streets and start flipping cars over with glee, but it does prompt the question: Really, what do you guys want? What were you hoping for? I find it more than a bit annoying that many people I know continually demand "more" from Nintendo without defining exactly what that "more" is.

"A Wii Zelda," someone told me last night.

Seriously? Yeah, because the last one was so groundbreaking. Come on, you guys. Help me out here. What does Nintendo need to do to impress you? What announcements would it need to make for you to consider it significant or pleasing?

Here's a challenge for the especially creative-minded among SVGL readers: In the comments, post your own description of the ideal Nintendo keynote, serious or satirical. You can even write it as a "script," if you want, whether from Iwata, Reggie (oh! I bumped into Reggie this morning while chatting to analyst extraordinaire Michael Pachter), Cammie, or anyone else. If you guys pull it out, I'll post the best ones in a "Best of SVGL" next week.

Tweet