The traditional way to view game companies when it’s E3 season is to look at what they announce for the future. In that regard, Nintendo had a so-so E3.
During its pre-recorded presentation, Nintendo announced relatively few games, most of them safe sequels and a line-up for the remainder of the year that’s a little thinner than last year’s. But then there’s what they’re doing now, in June, this very month in which E3 resides. What they’re doing has resulted in one of the best gaming months I’ve experienced on the Switch.
The Switch’s unusually strong June began with the release of Sushi Striker, an ingenious Nintendo-published puzzle role-playing game involving throwing plates of sushi. It sounds silly. It is silly. And it is also a terrific, impressively deep game.
Play this game. Or at least try the free demo.
I’ve been hooked on Sushi Striker, though my flight from New York to Los Angeles for E3 enabled me to catch up on some unfinished Switch games (Super Mario Odyssey and Doom) as well as the recently released pinball-based sidescroller Yoku’s Island Express.
June should be the slow season for catching up with unfinished games, but by E3 week Nintendo was serving up a demo containing the first few hours of July’s nice-looking JRPG Octopath Traveller and doing out-right-now announcements for the mega-popular online shooter Fortnite and the indie game Hollow Knight.
They also did a surprise autumn launch of the impressive if brutally difficult singleplayer expansion to Splatoon 2, which had been slated for winter.
It’s been a good month.
It isn’t that weird that a platform-holder might put out some games and demos during E3, but this month isn’t over yet. Today brings a new Mario Tennis game that sounds as though it has a solid story mode. And that isn’t all: We’re less than a week away from an extensive, exclusive Donkey Kong expansion to Ubisoft’s Mario/Rabbids crossover (I tried it early at E3. It’s good).
By month’s end, June 2018 will go down as one of the months that had the most new Switch games – many of them exclusive – that I was interested in playing. That has me looking at Nintendo’s E3 line-up a little differently.
Their holiday roster of Super Smash Bros., Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee, Super Mario Party and a Xenoblade Chronicles expansion seems slender. It makes me suspicious that something is missing. It also reminds me that there really is no time like the present. I don’t know if Nintendo’s spring is going to be as rich for Switch as I might want, but I’m blown away by Nintendo’s June.
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20 responses to “I Don’t Know If Nintendo Won E3, But They Are Winning June”
Lack of Bayonetta 3 news/trailers made Nintendo lose, imo (especially as they spent 40 or so minutes on SSB).
No update on Metroid either.
Or Pikmin.
If there isn’t anything to show, then there isn’t anything to show. The games aren’t coming this year, while Smash and the other games they showcased are. Personally, I just care about what’s coming in the next 12 months during E3 time…if it’s not coming in the next 12 months, I don’t really care. They have next year’s E3 to give us more details on those games as that’s more likely when they will be released.
The odd exception to this is the new Yoshi game – that was actually announced to be coming in 2018, yet we didn’t see it at all at E3. THAT one is confusing, I wonder why they didn’t show anything for that?
Too much time allocated to SSB lol.
They obviously wanted Smash to be their main focus this year…and let’s be honest that game will be a system seller so it makes sense. I’m also a big fan of the series so I didn’t mind that at all, Smash fans have been waiting months for that juicy information.
Despite that they did actually show us over 30 games in 16 minutes that gave us actual gameplay and not prerendered trailers. Most of them flew by pretty quickly so it would have been easy to miss them.
Nintendo said prior to the Direct that they were only focusing on 2018 games at E3, so it’s not surprising that Bayo 3/Metroid/The Long Awaited Sequel To Your Personal Favourite Nintendo Game wasn’t on show.
Unfortunately I’m not a huge fan of Sushi Striker The way of Sushido so I’m not going to make any further comments about that game. But it is a shame to say that Nintendo didn’t give us information about that new Yoshi game that was due to come out for the Nintendo Switch sometime in 2018 during E3 month. Well sadly the new Yoshi game has been delayed and now it will be coming out for the Nintendo Switch in 2019. I haven’t downloaded the Mario+Rabbids Kingdom Battle Donkey Kong Adventure DLC as part of the Season’s Pass yet but don’t worry I will download the Mario+Rabbids Kingdom Battle Season Pass soon.
I still think Nintendo has won the E3 press conference battle against Sony because Sony are a bunch of dickheads and with the Playstation 5 not coming out until 2020 that makes it even worse for Sony and their E3 press conference is fucking rubbish.
I just shake my head. There’s barely anything on Switch that interests me. Different tastes and all that I guess. Now if Nintendo could do games like Uncharted, Mass Effect, Detroit, Horizon Zero Dawn, Mirror’s Edge, Until Dawn, Assassin’s Creed, Persona, Madden, Drive Club, Borderlands, Gravity Rush, Hatsune Miku Project Diva, Infamous, The Last of Us, Overwatch, Sleeping Dogs, Tomb Raider, Watch Dogs, etc…
They already have BotW, is that not Horizon Zero Dawn-ish enough for you?
Also at E3 they showed Daemon X Machina, Super Mario Party, Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna the Golden Country, Fire Emblem Three Houses, Overcooked 2, Killer Queen Black, Octopath Traveler, Hollow Knight, Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Let’s Go, Eevee!, Starlink: Battle for Atlas, Arena of Valor, Minecraft, Fortnight, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle – Donkey Kong Adventure, Pixark, Just Dance 2019, Dragon Ball FighterZ, Splatoon 2: Octo Expansion, Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, Ninjalo, Carcassonne, Mario Tennis Aces , Ark: Survival Evolved, Wasteland 2, Fallout Shelter, Paladins, Dark Souls: Remastered, SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy, Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate, The World Ends with You, Mega Man 11, FIFA 19, and of course Super Smash Bros Ultimate.
Full disclosure – I do not currently own a Switch and I’ve been in the same position as you since launch – Super Mario Odyssey was the only game that interested me on it (I played BotW on the Wii U) so I didn’t see a reason to own one. Now though? That looks like it’s gonna change this year. If nothing on that above list interests you then you’re pretty hard to please.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. There’s the odd game that interests me, like Fire Emblem and Xenoblade, but for me, knowing that those games will always be full price (I buy most of my games when they are at least 50% reduced) means that buying a Switch is not a great value proposition. Again, that’s just me 🙂
Daemon X Machina was the only thing that seemed interesting, and it came and went with minimal fanfare. Super Mario Party was interesting in they finally got rid of the stupid party car thing, but it’s a bit of an old and tired series especially if you don’t do much in the way of local multi, not that much of a headliner. Mario Tennis is still just a tennis game, not overly exciting. Xenoblade, Mario Rabbids and Splatoon DLC, I dunno that any of that would win anyone over if they weren’t already interested in the original game. That was about it for Nintendo’s stuff, other than Fire Emblem I guess which is a bit of a daunting series to get into. Most of everything else was either old games that have been around forever on other platforms (or rehashes thereof), random indie stuff that didn’t seem particularly interested from what they showed, or RPGs (which are inherently uninteresting :P).
Not that I’m hard to please it’s just that list contains so little new IP. I’m not a Mario or Zelda fan so Mario kart 67 doesn’t really do it for me, releases of older games from other systems. Well I already own them why would I buy them again.
I am one of those people who would like the system if they had something appealing to me.
Well getting third party support is not a problem if third party wants to develop on it. We already have doom and Wolfenstein.
Give Nintendo some time to catch up to some mature titles. They lost one console generation of third party support after all.
I would love to play third party on Switch. Give me Assassin’s Creed Switch, Persona Switch or Mass Effect Switch any day of the week and I’ll prefer that to PS4 for the portability.
Yeap I want that too. We just have to wait >.<. At least it is stepping at the right direction now.
It’s not quite Persona, I know, but the parent series is coming to Switch in the form of Shin Megami Tensei V soon.
(Persona is actually a Playstation-exclusive franchise, which a lot of people don’t seem to realise.)
And there he is, right on schedule, on every Nintendo related article – just to remind everyone how much Nintendo doesn’t interest him. Just in case no one had noticed.
I’m glad you noticed, my friend <3
Thats what makes them nintendo. Im SO glad they dont do all the same stuff sony and microsoft do.