Nintendo apologises for E3

Nintendo president, Satoru Iwata, has moved to quell the growing upswell of unrest from the company's core fans, disgruntled by a lack of genuine 'games' revealed at E3.

He apologised for the absence of traditional 'key' Nintendo titles at the event, saying the perception the company was ignoring its core users was just a 'misunderstanding'.

The keynote press conference by Nintendo showcased casual games almost exclusively, with titles like Wii Sports Resort, Wii Music and Animal Crossing: City Folk being given lots of attention.

There was virtually nothing for the 'hardcore' fanboys to get excited about, with their jollies being sought at the stands of third-party developers.

Iwata spoke to Forbes about the problems:

"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 said.

"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'.

"However, the fact of the matter is 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."

The 'misunderstanding' was further inflamed yesterday by Nintendo's executive vice president, Cammie Dunaway, when she said that Wii Music "is just such vintage Nintendo ... because it's taking something that's a genre that everybody thinks they understand and twisting it on its ear, and doing it in a really fresh way."

Core gamers should be quite happy with Super Mario Sluggers, she said: "What core gamer doesn't love Mario and baseball and finding out which combination of characters are going to do what kind of crazy things in the field?"

Which, of course, led to most people saying "What core gamer? Well, me, for one".