wa news today: Nintendo faces big Wii-U challenge at E3 |

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Nintendo faces big Wii-U challenge at E3 |

By Dan Gallagher, MarketWatch

LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) ? Sony Corp. and Microsoft Corp. wrapped their press events for the E3 videogame conference on Monday with a focus on their current game consoles ? with no word of future devices that may be in the pipeline.

Nintendo

The new Wii-U videogame console from Nintendo.

By contrast, Nintendo

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?

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?is on deck for its own press event on Tuesday morning, and the Japanese videogame giant is expected to put most of its energies into showcasing its new Wii-U console, slated to launch later this year.

Relatively little was expected of the two companies that make the high-definition game consoles that many hard-core players prefer, even though both systems are showing their age.

Microsoft?s

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?Xbox 360 is in its seventh year on the market, compared with only four years for its predecessor console. Sony?s

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? PlayStation 3 is in its sixth year ? equal to the time its predecessor spent on the market before the newer device launched.

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?Microsoft and Sony are still selling a significant amount of hardware, so they want to seek out another year at least,? said Doug Creutz of Cowen Co. in an interview prior to the conference.

Most analysts agree that Nintendo faces a more difficult task, selling a new game console in the middle of a recession, as well as in a fast-changing industry increasingly dominated by cheaper games for mobile and social platforms.

Nintendo first previewed the Wii-U at last year?s E3, but the company has made some adjustments to the final version, including some tweaks to the control mechanism that includes both a touch-screen and traditional game controls.

The company released a video on Sunday ahead of E3, with President Satoru Iwata showcasing some of the console?s capabilities, including increased social-networking capabilities.
See Nintendo?s video here.

At the press event on Tuesday, the company is expected to announce new game titles being developed for the device. The Wii-U is designed to render games in high definition, as part of an effort to close the gap with the other two consoles. Nintendo ? which has a strong lineup of its own family-friendly game franchises ? may make a stronger effort to have the Wii-U appeal to the hard-core game crowd.

Click to Play

Nintendo pins hope on new console

Nintendo will unveil its successor to the Wii game console this week at the E3 videogame conference in Los Angeles. Daisuke Wakabayashi reports on digits.

?What Nintendo has to achieve at E3 is to forge an identity for the Wii-U,? said Jesse Divnich, vice president and lead analyst for the market-research firm Electronic Entertainment Design and Research. ?There is a lot of concern out there that publishers don?t know what demographic the Wii-U is trying to target at launch.?

In their own press event on Monday, French game publisher Ubisoft

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? highlighted several titles it is developing for the Wii-U, including a version of its popular core franchise ?Assassin?s Creed,? as well as games such as ?ZombiU? and ?Avengers: Battle for Earth.?

However, Nintendo?s always done the best on its consoles with its own properties, including well-known game characters such as Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong. Divnich says the company needs to feature these properties heavily in its launch.

?I think their best chance of success is showcasing their core properties. That is the Nintendo we have grown to love, and it?s a differentiator for their platforms,? he said. ?If Nintendo tries to compete with Xbox or PlayStation, they will fail.?

Gamers will also be looking for details like a more specific launch date and price. The price will be a critical data point analysts watch to gauge the potential appeal of the device this holiday season.

?If Nintendo prices the Wii-U too high, they?re going to walk into a wall,? Creutz said. He added that the company ?is going to have a hard time? with a price tag over the $200 mark.

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