Reggie would later come to own the gaffe though,
declaring in 2012 that his “body is always ready”
when demonstrating the new Wii Fit U. Well played.
7. Riiiiidge Racer
Sony, 2006
In 2013 Nintendo finally bit the bullet and admitted
that it had canceled the peripheral, citing that it
was “of narrower application than we had originally
thought.”
5. Xbox One Reveal - all of it
Microsoft, 2013
Kaz can’t even bring himself to look
excited about Riiiiidge Racer.
Another howler from Sony’s 2006 fiasco, which saw
Kaz Hiari doing his best to drum up interest from an
indifferent crowd. Turning the focus on the portable
PSP, then in its peak, seemed like a smart move, and
showing off a new Ridge Racer game seemed like
a smart way to do it. But despite Kaz’s increasingly
enthusiastic shouts of the game’s title- “it’s Ridge
Racer! Riiiiiiidge Racer!” - the crowd could only
manage a single ‘whoop’. Kaz also managed to drop
the PSP as well.
6. Wii Vitality Sensor
Nintendo, 2009
Don Mattrick, who now works for
Farmville creators Zynga.
Where to begin with Microsoft’s disastrous reveal
at E3 2013 of its brand new Xbox One console?
Whether fueled by the hubris of success imparted
by the Xbox 360 or just in a world of its own, the
company dropped bombshell after bombshell
when it unveiled the Xbox One. Mandatory Kinect
features. TV passthrough. Controllers that still
require AA batteries. But most damningly of all,
the DRM fiasco. Microsoft envisioned a world in
which we no longer owned games, but were merely
granted a license to play them, and preowned games
would require an activation fee. Oh, and there was
the steep asking price of the console itself.
4. James Cameron’s Avatar
Ubisoft, 2009
This is as much excitement as Nintendo could
muster for the Vitality Sensor.
Nintendo threw a curve ball at the E3 crowd when
it announced the Wii Vitality Sensor at its E3 2009
Press Conference, telling the audience of a new
device that would plug into a Wii remote and could
read the user’s pulse and heart rate, for… reasons.
For more reasons, Satoru Iwata elected not to
demonstrate the device, or even tell the audience
what uses he had in mind for it.
Cameron forgot the key principal of film
directing: Show, don’t tell.
Having confidence in your work is admirable,
but Ubisoft and James Cameron took this to new
extremes at the company’s 2009 Press Conference.
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