Nintendo Apologizes for Lackluster E3 Showings, Claims Hardcore Gamers Are 'Critically Important'

Responding to criticism that the Nintendo's E3 showings lacked a major first-party Wii title aimed at the hardcore gamer, president Satoru Iwata has apologized to those who felt betrayed.

"We are sorry about [the E3] media briefings, specifically for those who were expecting to see Nintendo show something about Super Mario or Legend of Zelda," Nintendo president Satoru Iwata told Forbes.

During Nintendo's recent E3 press conference, the company appeared to focus on casual-oriented titles, such as Animal Crossing: City Folk and Wii Sports Resort, and quickly glossed over major hardcore announcements, such as Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars on DS and word that the teams for Mario and Zelda were working on new, unspecified titles.

"If there is any perception that Nintendo is ignoring the core gamers, it's a misunderstanding and we really want to get rid of that misunderstanding by any means," he continued. "The so-called big titles need a long, long development period...we really didn't think this year's E3 media briefing was the time to do so."

One of the biggest E3 revelations for hardcore Nintendo fans, news that a new Pikmin game is in the works, came about as a unplanned response to a question from former Shacknews editor Chris Remo.

"I think we're addressing both [hardcore and casual gamers]," marking VP Cammie Dunaway informed Wired, expressing hope that third-party games like Call of Duty: World at War would be enough to sate the desires of hardcore gamers.

"We don't talk about stuff until we've got a great degree of confidence that we're close enough to release it."

The marketing VP confirmed that "the extent" of the Wii's remaining 2008 lineup had been detailed at E3, and also mentioned that despite her announcement of Grand Theft Auto on DS, she had not yet seen the title.

As for a solution to increase the Wii's 512 MB of internal memory, which is used to store downloaded content and has been chastised by developers as limiting the system's potential, Dunaway noted that Nintendo did not yet have a solution to announce, but suggested deleting old, infrequently used content.

Lastly, she expressed her belief that the recently unveiled Wii MotionPlus controller add-on, which increases the precision of the Wii's motion detection capabilities, is likely to "very rapidly" spawn sequels of current and upcoming Wii titles, "because it is a heck of a lot of fun."