Nintendo Wii

Nintendo generally has good public relations. This latest bit of PR shows me that their record for good PR might be on the decline. I'm not going to go on a rant about hardcore and casual, you can read a previous rant here.

Nintendo's latest comments about their E3 coverage seem to be borderline desperate. It seems to me they are starting to give into the power of the “hardcore gamer” press, which drove Nintendo into the ground because of E3. I really want to rant about that, but I won't. Instead here's the comment made to EDGE Magazine, “We have developers working on popular core gaming franchises but we need longer to complete [them], approximately 2 to 3 years”

People have been writing and fuming about having to wait awhile before first party Nintendo video games will be released. I'm not sure if they truly understand the gaming world, or if impatience is becoming a core virtue for gamers (actually I think it's always been there).

A videogame takes along time to create. The core first party video games that we've gotten from Nintendo in its past 2 years took along time to make. Here's a list of first party video games released by Nintendo in the past couple of years:

Super Mario Galaxy
Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
Super Paper Mario
Mario Kart: Wii
Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Wii Sports

Then we have to look forward to Wario Land: Shake It which will be coming out in September. Now, let's assume for the sake of the argument that all of these video game's dev teams are working on a new video game right after those were completed, then 2-3 years isn't that ridiculous. I know I might be in the minority, but I like to hear about when a video game has a long development period. There's nothing worse in the videogame universe than a rushed video game. Blizzard is the perfect example of a development company that takes its time to release a video game, and in the end reaps the benefits. Nintendo could be taking that road here, which I'm hoping is the truth. If that's the case, then a couple of years isn't that long to wait.

With some of the great third party video games slated to come out in early 2009, Nintendo could take a backseat and let those video games perform well. Or maybe Nintendo will completely surprise us and have something available in late 09. With the way Nintendo is savvy when it comes to the media, and how they treat announcements like gold in Fort Knox, anything is possible.