Waiting for Wii: When box babes attack
by Ludwig Kietzmann 
{ May 12th 2006 at 7:30PM }
In an effort to keep the people waiting (and waiting) to enter the Wii area somewhat occupied, Nintendo have put up a couple of large video displays on the walls nearby their booth, each one depicting an attractive woman staring out of a cold, white prison. That alone would normally be enough to satisfy most E3 attendees, but Nintendo has gone the extra mile and made the displays fully interactive. A small camera and microphone situated above the screen allow people to engage in some inane banter with these boxed babes, hopefully helping them to pass the time and touch the Wii that much quicker.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jappleng @ May 12th 2006 7:36PM
I have a question... could this be a replacement to booth babes since booth babes can't look half naked but games can? =3
velcrocore @ May 12th 2006 7:45PM
I've seen a couple videos of people interacting with them, but not enough to tell if it was a program running, or a live person in another room. This post sounds like it's a program, which would kick ass.
GTG @ May 12th 2006 7:55PM
The Nintendo setup this year was an absolute joke. Unlike past debuts, they purposely shielded the view of people playing with the Rev with no form of video broadcast either. In the past, if you didn't wait in line, you could at least watch people as they played with the product.
It seems very odd that Nintendo talks such big talk about exposure and expanding the game market and embracing everyone with the "Wii" (boy do I still hate that name), yet they go to great lengths to hide their product from anyone not willing to sacrifice an entire day to wait in line to get in (although I happen know a few people that got in via other means or had private demos). The line was often already CLOSED by 10AM.
Sony had the PS3 out on the floor in plain sight. I also give credit to Microsoft this year as they had a timed ticket system in place. Go by the booth, get a time ticket, then come back at your assigned time to watch the Gears of War demo. It was terrific. No wasting time in lines. Nintendo could have at least gone with a similar system since they decided to go with the totally cloaked hands-on this year.
PayTheMan @ May 12th 2006 8:01PM
@3: Getting stuck in the back of a long line isn't necessarily "cloaking" the Wii. It's just your poor luck combined with poor timing.
DidYouLoseASock @ May 12th 2006 8:06PM
Its a real person in another room with a camera above the TV so they can see the people on the floor. There were also alot of guys in there, not just girls. Here is a good video of the TV people http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J0IcIkJbws&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ewiigamer%2Ecom%2Findex%2Ephp%3Fpaged%3D14
GTG @ May 12th 2006 8:25PM
PayTheMan...sticking a 2 story wall around the play area and having security promptly chase away or stare down anyone that tried to peek in near the entrance/exit gap is what I mean by "cloaking." That booth was designed so that passers by and others could not watch people using the Rev. It was deliberately setup so that the Rev could not be viewed without waiting in line to enter the area.
Sean DL @ May 12th 2006 9:57PM
Seeing that playing=believing and not watching=believing, I can see why they didn't want people to just watching from a far judging something they aren't playing....
" I also give credit to Microsoft this year as they had a timed ticket system in place. Go by the booth, get a time ticket, then come back at your assigned time to watch the Gears of War demo. It was terrific."
No way that was going to work at the Wii demos. Not this year anyway...
theLoneYoshi @ May 12th 2006 10:07PM
One of my friends said that Charles Martinet (Mario voice) was in one of those displays.
GTG @ May 12th 2006 10:19PM
That's a very thin/weak argument. By that argument, no television commercials or print advertisements would ever work and Nintendo's marketing dept should just pack it up and go home. Watching people play Warhawk must have required massive brainpower in order to connect what people's hands were doing in relation to the actions on screen and evaluate their reactions.
Also, would you care to extrapolate on why a time reservation ticket system couldn't work? Nintendo is already controlling/limiting how long people play for, so there's already some hint of a schedule. At the beginning of the day, they could start handing out tickets (one initial line). Once all tickets are gone and to satisfy people that love lines, there could still be a "standby" line to fill the slots of people who don't show up for their reservation. Have a ticket, but show up late?...too bad.
With such a system, almost everyone knows immediately if they'll get play time and exactly when. People can then go about their business of viewing the rest of the show except for those few who want to camp out for an untaken slot.
At "best," the Nintendo Revolution booth setup was inflated hype that was attempting to suggest mystery/exclusivity (a complete antithesis to the stated goal of the system). At worst, it was an incredibly poorly thought out booth and they should have saved some money on the hot, dyed blondie and hired a better booth designer/engineer instead. Take your pick.
BklynKid @ May 12th 2006 11:08PM
LMAO "touch the Wii," does the pun never end? :p
BobFungus @ May 13th 2006 12:21AM
Cloaking the booths may seem stupid in your eyes, but keep in mind that by doing this Nintendo gets news articles on how long the line is to get into their booth. People interperet this as the press being very interested in the Wii, which in turn gives it a good rep. Sure, it's questionable on Nintendo's part, but Nintendo obviously thinks the positives outweigh the negatives.
everyone does it @ May 13th 2006 12:45AM
Complaining about N hiding the Wii behind a wall? Companies do this all the time. At least if you waited in line you got to play it!
Before the last year or two, with the idea of ticket appointments for shows (like Square and MS were doing) you had to wait for all kinds of stuff.
Did you not see the line to view the Halo 2 movie/demo? If you waited, you just got to sit in a room of 30 people and see a movie and watch someone slightly interact (aim the camera while it moved on a fixed track) with a level. Hours of waiting and you didn't even get to play it!
Yes, it's for hype. But to single out Nintendo is crazy. And no, Nintendo wasn't hustling people out. Once you got in, you could play as many games as you wanted (not in a row though). That was part of the problem, the line moved slowly because people stayed inside too long. A ticket system wouldn't work if people stayed, which is probably why Sony didn't use it last year for PSP. It works for timed shows. And a ticket system wouldn't make the Wii seem less exclusive, so I reject that argument as to why N would allow big lines.
Everyone has their hype generators. MS had a theater of just movies. Sony let the rumors stand that PS3 wouldn't be on the show floor and then had 100 of them there. Nintendo chose to let people into a private area, like they did with the DS two years ago E3 2004). And Sony did with PSP last year (E3 2005).
Ultimately, if you don't like the lines, don't stand in them and shut up about it. If no one stands in the lines, the companies will get the message. On the other hand, if it is worth the wait, perhaps people will do it. Look at the Sony line to play the PS3 upstairs (less crowded, but little else) versus the N line to play the Wii. There's a relative measure of how much value people thought there was to standing in line for those two things. One was only worth 15 mins (I waited less than that) and the other stretched 3 hours+ (I waited 2 hours 40 mins).
In the end, if you didn't have a lot of time to stand around, I would understand if you waited until later. It's not like it'll be tough to find a Wii later, you'll just have to wait a few months. I suspect it wouldn't kill most people to wait a few months to try the Wiimote. But me, I did almost everything I wanted the first day and had 3 hours to spare to play the Wii, so I did it. No regrets.
If you just got inside and viewed a movie like the Halo 2 booth, Doom 3 booth, Half-Life 2 booth or myriad others, then I wouldn't find it worth the time to stand in line and hence I didn't see any of those at E3 (well, I saw Halo 2, a MS friend let me in the back door). You can always see the trailers on the next anyway.
Danny @ May 13th 2006 1:24AM
My girl vaporized:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dannythegaminggeek/144898964/in/set-72057594130681477/
Tom Bennett @ May 13th 2006 1:28AM
Do note that the people eager to play on the Wii was ridiculously large. The wall was intended as a filter and a means to ensure some order. The line to get into the Wii area was, at times, six hours long. And then there were lines inside the area for individual lines. Now think if the area hadn't blocked off; Nintendo's entire area would have been one confusing mess of lines.
Eric @ May 13th 2006 3:25AM
"Fully interactive?!"...Pleaes tell me you gave her a purple-nurple and asked her if she could spell Wii correctly.
GTG @ May 13th 2006 4:35AM
Note, I wasn't complaining about not playing it. I never planned on playing it, but I just wanted to observe the general mechanic and people's reaction to the experience. I'm not hyped about having a hands on myself...I'm personally more interested in the virtual console and not the controller (but I did anticipate that watching people look silly would have been pretty entertaining). I was just annoyed with how Nintendo made sure you couldn't even SEE people using. This is much in contrast to years past (of Nintendo hands-on debuts) and all the marketing spin they're trying to put around the thing with their "message." That's where my comment about exclisivity comes in...not the limited availability of hands on time, but the total restriction on even seeing the thing in action outside of the scripted press demos.
Yeah, you can use the "everybody does it" argument, but I wouldn't say that fully validates the decision by itself or makes it a great idea. If they weren't limiting hands on time (for the general public), that also seems pretty daft. It's like their whole setup seems to be begging for optimization. There are ways to route/shape traffic so that the hands-on could be still viewed by the general public (platforms, externally projected video feeds, etc.)...it's not new, it's been done before, even by them.
As I mentioned, the setup was probably designed to inflate hype, which apparently "everybody does it" agrees with. However, I'm not sure how well it worked as most of what I heard from most people is "that's ridiculous." Actually, a similar off-hand comment happened to get a friend escorted into the demo area, so someone else agrees. It's definitely a marketing move that would be aimed at the general public...they can show photos of lines to the general public and translate that into positive spin.
Obviously I have my opinion, they have their's, and you have yours, but my opinion happens to involve calling out Nintendo's opinion as BS. I apologize for not posting a totally agreeable statement on a blog...I mistook this for a blog. I could have just screamed "shi**ock" in all caps.
MikeA @ May 13th 2006 5:38PM
Nintendo did it for DS and for Twilight Princess. What the hell do you think you are talking about? All of that was enclosed. So yeah its not just for the Wii.
Zanch @ May 14th 2006 6:03AM
I found the girls in the wall to be a pretty amusing idea, actually. The people I was there with had a good time messing with those girls in the wall, mostly because there wasn't really anything they could do about it. One guy even put his hand up over the camera, much to the displeasure of the girl inside it, of course. Priceless. I don't know if that's what Nintendo had in mind, but it worked. Made the wait a bit more bearable. Then again, we bolted right to the Nintendo booth as soon as the doors yo E3 were openned, so we only had to wait about an hour or so. Good times though.
Koya @ May 14th 2006 2:06PM
To everyone who complained about a time-passing feature for them and/or said nintendo was trying to be exclusive: Wiimote requires people to be flailing their arms around so I'm sure overcrowding the whole display area for that would've been the better idea!
Kevin @ May 14th 2006 6:18PM
The blonde in the pic was the hottest of all the booth babes, and she would flirt shamelessly with everyone that walked by. Plus, she had the jugs. ?
Wolfkin @ May 14th 2006 11:17PM
I think given the relativly newness of the interface that perhaps the shielding was more out of embarassment than hiding. We all want to laugh at the goofy looking people who haven't figure out how to control the Wii properly.
That said I thought I saw some guys in one of the videos. Though that particular chick in the pic is quite the hotness.