Opinion: Nintendo Live 2024 Sydney — Some thoughts on a underwhelming first showing Down Under

Nintendo Live 2024 Sydney was held last weekend. The event was, ultimately, a bit of a disappointing showing for the first run of this event Down Under. Rather than being a full scale official Nintendo fan convention, the event was more like a jumped-up version of the old Nintendo Connection Tours that visited major shopping centres around the country in the 2000s. While there’s nothing wrong with trying to make an event with something that can appeal to all different sorts of Nintendo Fans, the execution in this instance resulted in an event that gave the impression of two separate events being awkwardly mashed together.

On one hand, you had everything happening on the main stage, which had broad appeal but was particularly anticipated by a lot of the older fans. However outside of sitting in the audience for these big live streamed events, with the attractions on offer, there really wasn’t all that much meaningful to do. You had a few photo opportunities with sculptures and people in character costumes, a bunch of demo stations for old games that fans have probably already long-since played if they have any interest in the franchise, the woefully understocked My Nintendo Store, and the one highlight, the Mario Dojo. All of which you'd have to waste a lot of time getting in queues for. That might have been enough to satisfy younger fans who were there with their parents, but that younger audience ended up constituting only a relatively small fraction of the attendees from what we could see wandering around all of Day 1. You also had a lot of the venue going underutilized for much of the event. The entrance hall was unnecessarily large, and wouldn’t have been used at all for most of the day if they hadn’t been forced to relocate the My Nintendo Store Ticket Distribution Zone there. The Live Stage area meanwhile was only used for roughly half the event, being effectively an unofficial rest area for the remaining time. Between them, these two zones accounted for a little under half of the entire available floor space.

Now to be fair to Nintendo, we should have really seen this coming. The micro-site for the event did list every single thing that would be at the event... but really, that in itself was part of the problem. Attendees I spoke to said that they felt like the webpage was vague about what was on offer, to the point where they assumed that this was intentional, perhaps due to something that Nintendo might want to announce or reveal at the event. If someone had looked at information about Nintendo Live in Seattle last year, they would’ve seen that a lot of it sounded quite similar, but also that it got live concerts, and previews for upcoming 1st party and 3rd party games, amongst other things. Expecting that we might get something similar isn’t really that unreasonable. One example that came up a few times was disappointment over the lack of demo units for upcoming Nintendo titles, with the most recent title on the show floor being Princess Peach: Showtime! from March. This was particularly frustrating for some, given that demo units for both The Legends of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom and Super Mario Party Jamboree were both present at PAX West 2024, which was being held that same weekend in the United States.

On that point, the selection of titles represented itself gave the impression of Nintendo Live’s show floor having been cobbled together from props and displays that had been used at previous events. The newest title on the show floor after Princess Peach: Showtime! was Super Mario Bros. Wonder from October 2023 (which as it happens was playable on the show floor at Nintendo Live 2023 Seattle ahead of its release). So given that, there was really nothing new or engaging for a lot of fans with the games available. Perhaps the strangest choice of all was the tiny space given to Pikmin Bloom, a game developed and published by Niantic rather than by Nintendo themselves, and which appeared to be largely ignored by everyone walking past for most of the day.

Speaking of Pikmin Bloom, the presence of this Niantic game really highlighted for me how the Pokémon franchise was treated as something of an afterthought at the event. Not only was Niantic’s Pokémon GO not even present in any capacity, but Pokémon Scarlet & Violet had the most bare-bones display of all the large games present at the event, with an area for photos with Pikachu, done up in the style of a stereotypical Japanese room with wood and paper walls and doors, being the highlight. I honestly couldn't tell if this was meant to be vaguely reminiscent of the "Something gorgeous" design for the Blueberry Academy League Club Room from The Indigo Disk DLC, or if this was maybe a leftover set from some convention booth promoting the Master Dojo from the Pokémon Sword and Shield DLC, or for Pokémon Legends: Arceus. There was also a single Poké Ball sculpture (pictured left), and a wall with game boxes of the Pokémon main series games from the first generation through to today. Pokémon's presence wasn’t any better at the My Nintendo Store, where Pokémon was only present in the form of some Amiibo, and physical copies of select games. Pokémon was also conspicuously absent from all of the official branding and merchandise for the event. There was also no Pokémon artwork on the tote bag given to every attendee when they entered, and it’s the only franchise at the event which wasn’t represented on the Nintendo Live 2024 Sydney commemorative coin that every attendee received. While all of this is perhaps not entirely surprising, given that The Pokémon Company has handled a lot of their marketing separately to Nintendo in recent years, Nintendo Australia acts as the Australian office for The Pokémon Company. Theoretically, it should be the one division of Nintendo where these sorts of issues here could potentially have been handled, if they had sufficient resources. But that's an issue for another rant another day.

Speaking as someone who's worked as both a marketing academic and consultant, the overall impression from what was available was that Nintendo didn’t, or perhaps couldn’t, leverage the information they had at hand regarding their attendees. Given that attendees had to use their Nintendo Accounts to enter the raffle for their tickets, Nintendo should have known at minimum:

• The games attendees had played on their Switch, and for how long (including games registered/purchased but not yet played)​
• Which merchandise attendees had previously purchased from the My Nintendo Store​
• The proportion of attendees that were adults or children, and how many of those attendees were adults who would be attending without children​
• Which parts of Australia and New Zealand attendees were coming from (if you don't have an address from My Nintendo Store, you probably have an IP from their Switch console connecting to the internet that gives you a rough location)​

Now again, to be fair to Nintendo, you would have to imagine the majority of the event was already long since planned out and booked before Nintendo even opened the ticket raffle, so there wouldn’t really have been all that much they could change at relatively short notice. But that still begs the question of how much thought was being put into the contents of the event, and what Nintendo have actually learned from running other Nintendo Live events overseas. Even before people started putting in for the raffle, you’d have to presume Nintendo should know which Nintendo Accounts are the most active, and which Nintendo Accounts engage more frequently with marketing communications from Nintendo. Together with all the other information they know about those accounts, that should be more than enough to profile the accounts most likely to engage with the event announcement and raffle. Unless the raffle then resulted in an extremely unrepresentative sample of participating Nintendo Accounts scoring tickets, the makeup of the event being tilted towards older fans should have been blatantly obvious.

It’d be one thing for an event like this to be held as a local event, targeting primarily families who live in the same city. Heck, if that had been the case, I would’ve been praising this as an amazing day out for the kids during the mid-semester school holidays, greatly eclipsing the old Nintendo Connection Tours. But once you’ve got people traveling from as far away as Perth and New Zealand to arrive at your event, the expectations of everyone attending that event are naturally going to be commensurately higher. I’d also expect that families with young kids would typically be much less likely to travel such long distances for the event, simply given the expense, in which case most of the long-distance attendees with heightened expectations would be those adult fans. I don’t think it’s unfair at all for them to have expected more, or for them to have come away from the event feeling like they’ve been treated as second-class fans compared to those overseas.

Now granted, it could well be that Australia and New Zealand are a bit of an outlier here. Maybe the data they had from past Nintendo Live events overseas suggested they’d have a lot more families attending, and things went quite different to what they were expecting. If that’s the case, some of these decisions are more understandable. But even if that’s the case, there’s still a bunch of easily foreseeable issues here that Nintendo walked right into.

First and foremost of those was the gigantic mess that was the My Nintendo Store. Day 1 was just a comedy of errors, and it doesn't sound like this were any better on Day 2. Nintendo were clearly aware of how popular the store would be, hence why they had set up a ticket system to allow them to better manage the flow of customers. But the implementation of that ticket system initially was an absolute disaster, with a very real and serious fire safety issue being created by people crowding in the middle of the hall to try and snag a ticket. The messaging confusion where people were being told that the ticket allocation for the day was all gone, only for allocations to be reopened multiple times as the queue was finally moved to a more reasonable location, certainly didn’t help things either. Nor did the conflicting messages about if people with disabilities would have priority and be able to skip the queue. And of course, by the time people actually managed to get into the store late in the day, they found that Nintendo had apparently wildly underestimated demand, with the vast majority of plush toys already being completely out of stock. How Nintendo managed to underestimate that demand when they knew it'd be popular enough for them to have to implement a ticket system for entry is anyone’s guess, but I can only assume they figured most people would buy 1 or 2 items each, and that they were completely unprepared for the sheer quantity of items that early customers would pick up.

Another thing that has to be mentioned is the absolutely woeful situation with regards to food and drink. Which is to say, there basically wasn’t any. There was nowhere to purchase food anywhere inside the venue, and while there were a limited amount of water coolers near the Kirby and Mario Dojo areas, these quickly ran out of water and were not topped up in a timely manner. Given that attendees weren’t supposed to be able to re-enter after leaving (though there were plenty of conflicting messages about this from floor staff on the day), and that they couldn’t bring in any food or drink other than a plastic bottle of water, this left people stuck between a rock and a hard place. If this was all some kind of nudging strategy to encourage people to not linger too long, it was doomed to failure from the very beginning. In particular, the hardcore fans who were there for the tournaments were basically stuck having to tough it out, and hope they’d had enough before coming in.

So with all that said, let’s talk about what they did do right, and how could this event could have been improved.

The best aspect of the event, in my opinion, was the Mario Dojo, which had a clear and broad appeal to the entire spectrum of fans attending. This was easily the most interactive experience at the event, with participants competing in a series of challenges that narrowed the field down to 4 competitors who’d take to the small stage. You might have had to wait a while for a round to finish and your turn to start, but while you’re standing there in the queue you’re at least able to watch the previous round as it finishes up on stage, so you’ve actually got something making you constantly feel like you’re part of the event. Considering how much time the average Nintendo Live attendee probably spent in various queues throughout the event, that made a big difference. Each round had a different challenge for the final round on stage as well, so you always had something different to watch, and never knew what would be waiting for you if and when you qualified for the stage.

For the most part, I’d also say all of the events on the main stage, at least those I saw on Day 1, were done rather well. It was standing room only for most of the time with these, and I don’t think anyone who managed to catch them left disappointed.

The way Nintendo has continued to respond to what happened with the My Nintendo Store is also worthy of praise. While it took a while to get there, the decision late on Day 1 to allow people to either pick their orders up the next day, or else to have them shipped to them anywhere in Australia or New Zealand free of charge, was the right choice to make in a difficult situation. At that point, with pick-up running behind by more than 2 hours, I’d say there were plenty of people who were about to panic that they’d miss their flight home, and likely plenty more who hadn’t really eaten or drunk anything since they entered the event mid-morning. I know at least one of these, picking things up in the morning, had been rejected initially when suggested by event staff who’d been running the checkouts, so I was very glad when the announcement went out to everyone waiting in that massive queue. Of course, immediately afterwards they ended up calling out my number, so I wasn’t able to take advantage of it, but still, it was the thought that counted. The email (see left) that went out to attendees on Friday September 6th, acknowledging the issues and promising that items will be made available on the online My Nintendo Store, is also greatly appreciated. It's also good to see that they're going to be enforcing purchase limits on these, though given that the purchase limits are per-product and per-customer, I can't help but be concerned that they're going to see bulk one-of-everything purchasing from some customers, resulting in the exact kinds of stock problems they had on the show floor. Still, the bright side of that might just be that Nintendo Australia will have a clearer understanding of how much their Australian fan base have been clamouring for this kind of merchandise for a long time, and we might just see better availability of these sort of things in Australia going forward.

As for what could be improved, let’s start with some of the low hanging fruit. Nintendo really needed to have better parity between this event, and the previous Nintendo Live 2023 event in Seattle, with proper on-floor presence for their upcoming titles. Both The Legends of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom and Super Mario Party Jamboree desperately needed large, dedicated demo areas. Having both of these present at PAX West (held on the same weekend in the United States) and not at Nintendo Live demonstrates at best a lack of co-ordination between Nintendo’s various divisions, and at worst a failure of imagination and forward planning. Even if they each only got relatively bare-bones sections on the show floor like Pokémon Scarlet and Violet did, with minimal decoration and maybe an associated photo opportunity, having a selection of demo units for these upcoming games would have gone a long way to making people feel better about the event. Spaces for other recent releases honestly wouldn’t have gone astray either. While I can understand not wanting one for Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club in the context of a family friendly event (though that didn’t stop them having it available for purchase from the My Nintendo Store), the Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition really needed a full on Mario Dojo style area rather than being relegated to a single 60 minute session on the main stage at the end of Day 2. If Nintendo wanted to take an extra step, demo units for titles that are a bit further out, like Mario & Luigi: Brothership (due early November) and Donkey Kong Country Returns HD (due mid-January 2025), would also have made a huge difference. Obviously that would be highly dependent on the start of the games being sufficiently polished, but this close to release (and given the necessary lead times before that with logistical concerns for the physical carts, etc), you’d hope that things should be at that point now.

Speaking of demo units, just as Nintendo Live 2023 Seattle devoted some space to 3rd parties, it would’ve also been nice to have had some space for games from local indie developers at the event. Even if each game only had a single unit tucked away in a corner somewhere, that still would’ve made a significant difference for a lot of these small devs, who can often struggle to gain attention in the crowded eShop. As an example off the top of my head, Rainmaker Productions released Omochapon just at the start of last month, and that game would have been a perfect fit for the kind of family friendly atmosphere of this event.

Still on the point of maintaining parity, the Main Stage should really have been properly utilized instead of being left to sit idle for so long. International Convention Centre Sydney (ICC Sydney), where Nintendo Live was held, will be hosting a Hatsune Miku concert later this year. Given that, there presumably shouldn’t have been any technical issues preventing an appearance by K.K. Slider, or one of the groups from Splatoon. I would have appreciated seeing more Q&A’s with people besides Charles Martinet as well. There were a number of observers wandering around the event from both Nintendo HQ in Japan, and Nintendo America, and if the budget existed to bring them here you would’ve hoped that someone a bit more recognizable and public facing could have showed. Perhaps in conjunction with promotion for one of the upcoming games? Imagine if they'd had a segment with Hidemaro Fujibayashi, discussing his long involvement with the Zelda franchise, and showing off Echos of Wisdom. Or if they really wanted to be adventurous, maybe a session with some of the developers from Mario & Luigi: Brothership who also worked on the previous titles in the series at Alpha Dream?

The My Nintendo Store’s issues were also pretty obvious. They needed more staff available to handle order fulfillment to avoid that massive delay at the end of Day 1, and more stock available for all the plush lines in particular. If space for that amount of stock was an issue, I suspect they could’ve removed the physical Games and Nintendo Switch systems and accessories entirely. Possibly the Amiibo too. While I don’t doubt the Amiibo sold in some numbers, just because of how much harder it’s gotten to find those in stores here, particularly for the older figures, it’s not like those aren’t normally available on the My Nintendo Store online. Focusing just on the merchandise that’s not normally available in the Australian market, and possibly expanding the range of event exclusive merch, would have gone down quite well. Though I’m glad we all got the event-exclusive pins in our bags for free on entry, additional small products like those could have also helped to round out the store. After all the plush under $20 sold out, there wasn’t really anything in the way of an impulse purchase left outside of maybe Animal Crossing Amiibo cards.

Speaking of merchandise... I realise this is a long-shot given the issues regarding dealing with The Pokémon Company, but a Pokémon Center pop-up store would have been amazing. I honestly wouldn’t have even suggested this if not for Pokémon Center opening the Australia and New Zealand store earlier this year. We still don’t have the full catalogue of the US Store, and shipping costs are rather high, so having that there would have been extremely popular.

Finally... food and drinks. I can understand if this issue was due to limitations put in place by the venue, but from my experience attending conventions elsewhere I would’ve assumed that it should be possible to have something available, even if only something run by the venue itself. If Nintendo Australia were able to sell food and drink themselves directly though... well, know this is another long shot, and it’s certainly not something Nintendo Live in Seattle had to my knowledge, but I feel like there’s a huge missed opportunity here for them to sell Nintendo-themed food and drink. It doesn’t even need to be anything as elaborate as pop-up stores for some of the various Nintendo-franchise themed café’s in Japan, though that would certainly be amazing if that could have somehow been arranged. Even just a little stand where we could buy various Nintendo-themed small snacks and confectionery items would have been nice. Despite that there’s quite a few Asian supermarkets already selling some of these products in Australia, it’s probably safe to assume most local fans have never seen them before, let alone tried them, so it would’ve been a nice little unique experience for them. Plus, given that there’s clearly some company already importing them for those stores, it’s not like it should have been that hard for Nintendo Australia to acquire them.

I think I’ve ranted enough at this point, so just to bring things to a close... this was Nintendo’s first time running this specific event in Australia, and to my knowledge the first time they’ve run an event locally at this scale. Given that they are a global company however, with global expertise that they should have been able to draw on from other regions that have run Nintendo Live events, I would have expected more out of them. If this is simply a case of Nintendo Australia being under-equipped to run an event like this, then I can only hope that in future, Nintendo will give its Australian division a little more love, and the resources it needs to properly grow and prosper.