Nintendon’t love me

See that old lady up there? She probably kinda looks like your mom. She shops at Wal-Mart and buys licensed games based on cartoons and Hannah Montana. She’s not me. She’s probably not you, and she is Nintendo’s target demographic. Based on today’s E3 press conference, Nintendo is no longer interested in my money.

Never mind that I have bought every console it’s made for the past 21 years. That I love their key franchises and have purchased their past three consoles primarily to play the next Mario and Zelda. The Mario and Zelda teams are reportedly “hard at work” on those franchises, but we don’t even get a glimpse of them. Instead we get Wii Sports Resort and Wii Music, games I never want to play. Nintendo is all yours, mom. Call me when they make some actual games again.

Sony keeps on making promises …

Sony sure talks a good game. They’re infinite promises killed the Dreamcast, no matter that they never delivered on half of them. PSN will offer everything Xbox Live does … eventually. Home is going to be totally awesome … someday. Hey, at least we have God of War 3 … well, a CG teaser.

Sony’s press conference, though not as devoid of content as Nintendo’s, was sadly lacking. Video downloads! Yeah, welcome to XBL Marketplace two years ago. Life With Playstation! Sounds a lot like Wii’s News and Weather channels.

A Resistance 2 trailer was certainly impressive in its size and scope, but Insomniac’s shooter was overshadowed by Gears of War two years ago, which could happen again. Sucker Punch’s Infamous looks promising, but it’s not coming until spring 2009. Little Big Planet could be the best Nintendo game Nintendo didn’t make and looks infinitely more appealing than anything Nintendo had to show.

But why can’t they figure out what to do with the PSP? It’s a great piece of hardware, but all they showed was a series of PS2 ports and a portable version of Resistance, when they have had little success making shooters work with one analog stick. A handheld version of PSN shooter Super Stardust is more like it, but what else? Why aren’t there more downloadable PSOne games? More original IPs? I’m sure Sony has the perfect plan for it … they just can’t tell us yet.