I'm sitting in the front row of the Nintendo keynote waiting for things to get underway. Word is that there will be little announced today, but I'm probably wrong.

Check back on this post for more as it happens. Hit the jump for more.

Update 1:
Iwata just took the stage. He's going through the short history of Nintendo competition with Sony and Nintendo's decision to redefine their business strategy.

Oh, funny guy. He was actually talking about Pepsi and Coke not Sony and Nintendo.

The three basics food groups for gamers, according to Iwata:

Fritos, Cheetos and Doritos.

Iwata's talking about Nintendo's decision to reach out to casual gamers through the DS.

"For some time we have bleived that the gaming industry is ready for some disruption."

Update 2:

Iwata is walking the audience through the tremendous success of their portable line and how it compares to the Playstation 2 in Japan.

The Brain Games, he says, are an example of the possibilities of the DS.

Where did this idea come from? I m sure you can guess it started where all great games begin, from a board of directors.

The story goes that an exec complained he didn t know anybody his age who plays games.

I thought it was a good idea but I thought it was a mistake to create something that would appeal just to seniors.

I asked each of our four development groups to nominate someone to start on a task force.

The goal, he says, was to make a game that would appeal to everyone from young to old.

Update 3:

Once the book, Train Your Brain, hit the radar, Nintendo decided to look into translating into a game.

Iwata decided to meet with Dr. Ryuta Kawashima on the launch day of the DS in Japan.

The three-hour meeting enthused the doctor and he and Iwata started talking how to do it.

Kawashima slapped a device on a Nintendo team member s head to see how playing games could work out different parts of the brain.

Iwata met with the development team and told them they should finish the first game in 90 days.

Initial orders for the game, Iwara said, weren t very good. To get around their fears of the unknown, the Nintendo sales people got the buyers to play the game in their meetings.

Iwata just called up a localization team member for the Brain Age game to the stage.

It looks like a demo is on hand.

Update 4
The U.S. version, as we ve reported, will include a fairly robust Sudoku program. (I ve played the heck out of it and love it.)

Nintendo just got Will Wright to get on stage to play Brain Age. Awesome. There s also a G4 guy and the director of GDC up there. They re about to have a brain off.

The Nintendo guy won hands down, but Wright did amazingly well for having never seen the game. He actually dropped his age sizably (a good thing) by the second game. (I ll br posting up a video of the brain off later).

Update 5

Iwata says the first Brain Age had initial orders of 70,000. The second game had initially orders of 850,000 and that wasn t enough, he says.

The three Brain Age games have sold more than five million copies to date.

The moral is to follow two rules in game development: listen to your board of directors and listen to your chief financial officer.

Iwata calls Brain Age a treadmill for the mind. At Nintendo, he says, they have people take the game home and show it to friends. The end result is a whole new market segment.

Iwata is going to give out copies of Brain Age to all the members of the audience. Sweet.

As we leave, we get a copy. It may not be an HDTV, but the crowd goes wild.

Update 6

Iwata s talking about the game network now. He said they knew they wanted Mario Kart DS and Animal Crossing Wild World to be online. They also wanted their connection to be seamless.

Initially, they thought WiFi should be set up as a social network, almost a sort of MySpace for the DS, Iwata says.

Iwata says NiWiFi is doing great and way better than Xbox Live. Of course it s free.

Oh, now he s talking Metroid Prime Hunters.

Another fun demo coming up.

Looks like a Metroid Prime Hunters play-off. This time it features some of the development team.

Man, this is going to be a pwning.

(I ll have another video of this in a bit.)

Update 7

Iwata s back. Now he s talking about Tetris DS (Joel totally owned me in this the other night.)

Now he s talking New Super Mario Bros.

Iwata just announced the Legend of Zelda Phantom Hourglass designed exclusively for the DS and will launch later this year. (I ll have a short shaky cam up in bit.)

Ah, finally. Revolution stuff.

He s talking about the Revolution controller.

Our first controller meeting was in 2004 and we had several requirements. It needed to be wireless and the look of the controller had to be simple, non-threatening but had to be sophisticated enough to server the needs of complicated games.

Two people spent six months sketching proto-types, Iwata said. Dozens of prototype designed were created.

Many ideas were floating around, but nothing felt revolutionary.

He s talking about the struggles the new controller went through to gain internal acceptance.

By adding a second attachable device, they decided they had their controller.

Some people decided to invest on the screen, we decided to spend ours on the gaming experience. It s an investment in actual market disruption. We believe a truly new type of gaming entertainment can not be realized unless there is a new way to connect a player to the game they are playing.

Wow, amazing Revolution announcement.

Games specifically developed for the Sega Genesis will be available on the Revolution.

Iwata is talking about the cost of games now.

Update 8

With Nintendo Revolution we offer a combination of opportunities which cannot be matched.

I consider our Virtual Console concept the gamer version of Apple s iPod download service.

Iwata says that while others will have a download game service, it won t be the same because this process is a part of Nintendo s DNA.

At Nintendo we do not run from risk, we run to it. We are taking the risk to run beyond current boundaries.

Video games are meant to be one thing: Fun.

And that s it s over. No price and little news, but still very fun.