It’s not just in the English-speaking part of the internet that felt letdown. The Japanese-speaking part wasn’t exactly blown away, either.
This year, Nintendo held a Digital Event for E3. There was news (like here, here, and here), and while some fans were happy (puppets!), many were not. No wonder Kotaku named it one of the day’s losers.
Just check out the dislikes on YouTube (above). As of writing, the clip has 5,888 likes and 6,824 dislikes.
Nico Nico, the popular Japanese video platform, polled its viewers after streaming the Digital Event. (This image says 74,000 viewers, but the figures on Nico Nico are 84,462 viewers).
Via Yaraon, here’s the result of that poll:
- 52.4 percent said it was not good
- 17.6 percent said it wasn’t so good
- 13.6 percent said it was okay
- 6.5 percent said it was somewhat good
- 9.9 percent said it was very good
Typically, Nintendo Directs score pretty good on Nico Nico polls, often getting mostly “Very Good,” “Somewhat Good,” and “Okay” for replies.
I’m guessing because of this poll, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata sent out a tweet in Japanese, stating, “Thank you for staying up and watching. We are earnestly taking into account the various opinions regarding this year’s Digital Event, and we will work hard to meet everyone’s expectations in the future.”
I see that more as we’ll-do-our-best kind corporate speak tweet and a way for Iwata to say Nintendo will try to manage expectations better. That’s about all we can really expect from a Japanese game exec.
Since Nintendo is not talking about it’s new hardware until 2016, this is kind of an off year for Nintendo. Bad polls or not, next E3 is bound to be different.
Better, hopefully.
To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter@Brian_Ashcraft.