As we all know, Nintendo whiffed it at E3 this year. No new Metroid, no new Zelda, way too many Mario games, only one of which is from a Mario franchise that isn’t tired, and NintendoLand. They wanted us to get excited over a freaking minigame collection with Miis in it.
Some good stuff turned up elsewhere, like Game and Wario, but most of it was…well…unexciting to hardcore gamers. We thought we’d delve into why, by rewriting the presentation so it was more honest and reflecting Nintendo’s position in the marketplace.
Reggie Fils-Aime:
I could stand up here and talk about synergizing your hardware with your life, but I’m tired of hearing the whining. So here’s how it is.
We made a lot of money off your mom. Like, a lot of money. We sold nearly a hundred million Wiis. 100 million! And we sold them at a profit, to boot. Seriously, that’s, like, billions in profit, even with the strong yen murdering us.
And we didn’t do it thanks to you, the hardcore gamers. You ditched us back when the GameCube came out, and all you do is complain about how we’re not hardcore anymore, like we ever saw ourselves as something other than a toy company, and how nobody would buy our systems because you didn’t like them, and we outsold your precious 360 and PS3 by a third. And we know you secretly bought a Wii used to play our Zelda and Metroid games. Don’t even act like you didn’t. So we still got your money anyway.
You don’t buy our consoles new, though, so we don’t care what you think. We’re a business, and you’re not a customer. You know who’s a customer? Everybody else. It’s like McDonald’s caring about what PETA thinks. Really, we shouldn’t even be here, but it’d be tacky to cancel, so we’re just phoning this one in.
And we’ll continue to make money off everybody but you, whether it’s selling your mom a WiiU because of WiiFit, selling your big sister a copy of Sing which you’ll have to configure the family living room for, or selling your little brother a 3DS because he’s addicted to Pokemon. That’s our customer base now. Deal with it.
Here’s some French guy who made a zombie game.
Some French Guy:
What do you mean, he left the building? Oh well, here’s forty minutes of ports.
You have to admit, it would have made for a much funnier show.
image courtesy HeyGabe on Flickr