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| A look at the word of mouth caused by E3 |
A few months before E3, an annual, publicized trade fair in June for video game companies to share upcoming products, Nintendo announced that there would be no formal press conference, nor one of their streamed programs called "Nintendo Digital Events", an irregularity for a company with such a large influence over gaming media. In addition, the company announced that their would be no news regarding the next console, codenamed NX, that is currently scheduled to release on March 2017. Many gaming fans were disappointed by this news, as traditionally, most of the biggest announcements that gaming companies had to offer were usually broadcast at E3. In addition, they also announced that the only game that would be playable at the event was the next then untitled installment of The Legend of Zelda series. As most companies offered a wide selection of titles at E3, this was another sizable letdown for gaming aficionados. This year looked to be another year of disappointment of Nintendo fans, as the companies' attendance last year's was negatively received due to the poor presentation and structure of their 2015 Nintendo Digital Event.
However, despite many predictions of Nintendo's event being a disappointment, it actually succeeded in the one way that it matters: word of mouth. While other companies had more games that could be discussed online, Nintendo's focus on one massive title, now named The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, that appealed to a sense of nostalgia for the series's NES classic as well as the demo's ability to showcase a large variety of variables and features allowed for the company to receive a massive amount of attention that surpassed all other titles. With having only one title, Nintendo's online presence overshadowed all of EA's titles combined.
The reason for the large attention that Nintendo received can be traced back to the way they revealed information about the game: through the Nintendo Treehouse Live @ E3 program. After an impressive trailer showcasing the game's massive scale, the demo for the game was streamed over five and half hours, with not much repetition of activities during the showcasing of the Zelda installment. This allowed the game to be continually be discussed through social media over a longer period of time compared to other titles that received a few minutes of trailer footage as new features were unveiled and developers were interviewed on the stream, allowing more people to be aware of Nintendo's title. Additionally, the honesty in regards to the company's E3 showing before the event, as opposed to the secrecy that most companies had (including Nintendo in previous years) allowed fans to know what they are getting into; they knew that they were not going to receive any news about the next console and were only going to get information about Zelda as well as other upcoming games for current systems. As such, fans were not as disappointed as they were last year when not too many new titles were announced.
The impact of a new installment of the Zelda series also caused a lot of attention, as console Zelda games are released very rarely, with a new title every five years, a much longer gap than the annual and expected releases of Assassin Creed and Call of Duty games. And as such, with the combined approach of detailing what will be showed at E3 and streaming over a long period of time, Nintendo caused a larger stir in gaming social media more than any other company.
Why do you think that Nintendo was more positively received this year compared to last year? Leave a comment below and let me know!
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