What good is E3 hype if none of it comes true?

To get you ready for this E3, we've subjected ourselves to re-living the major press conferences of last year's big show. We've pulled all of the predictions, promises and other verbal constructions Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony used to get you excited about their console. And we've seen what became of all those thrilling statements.

Microsoft was yesterday. Nintendo, your E3 2008 promises are being checked today — exhaustively.

Background: The Nintendo press briefing occurred on July 15 at the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles. This event lasted exactly an hour, and you might remember that it didn't go over very well.

Shaun White "Exclusive"

After demoing Shaun White Snowboarding with the help of Shaun White, Nintendo's executive vice president of sales and marketing, Cammie Dunaway, says: "All of you can have as much fun as I just had when this game arrives exclusively for Wii by year end."

Verdict: Hmmm. Yes, the version of Shaun White Snowboarding that you can play with the Wii Balance Board proved to be exclusive to the Nintendo Wii last fall, but there were Xbox 360 and PS3 versions later in '08 too, you know.

Mario and Zelda Folks At Work

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata: "Our internal team which creates Mario games and the one that makes Zelda games are both hard at work. They will bring new titles to Wii."

Verdict: Expected to come true someday. Not yet.

Animal Crossing Is Coming

Animal Crossing creator Katsuya Eguchi details the features for the fall's Animal Crossing City Folk, including a new city, Wii message board interaction, the ability to send messages to cell phones and PCs too, support for the Wii Speak mic.

Verdict: All these features were included when the game launched.

Wii Speak Is On Its Way

Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils Aime says: "Animal Crossing is on its way to Wii by the end of the year with the Wii Speak option."

Verdict: Yup. He was right!

Lots of DSes

FIls-Aime: "By the end of our current fiscal year next March we expect that total DS worldwide sales will grow to almost 100 million systems."

Verdict: Indeed. Nintendo announced that the company achieved this milestone in March, just weeks before the end of its fiscal year.

Three Key Games

Nintendo declined to show a reel of upcoming Wii games, instead showing three that would be out later in the year: Star Wars The Clone Wars, Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party, Call of Duty: World at War.

Verdict: And, yes, those games came out.

Big Franchises on DS

Dunaway: "An even more imaginative interpretation of the [Guitar Hero] franchise called On Tour Decades is on the way… the DS is also the only gaming-dedicated platform where you'll find Will Wright's Spore this year."

Verdict: The new Guitar Hero came out, as did Spore Creatures. And, no, Spore on PC does not count as Spore coming out on a gaming-dedicated platform. Nor does Spore on the Wii, which is coming out this year, not last year.

More Pokemon

Dunaway announces "the next invasion of Pokemon," the release of a new Pokemon Ranger for November 10, 2008.

Verdict: Accurate. It happened.

GTA in the Winter

Dunaway: "We can announce today that a custom version of Grand Theft Auto called Chinatown Wars arrives on DS this winter." She added that the game will feature new characters and the "same free-ranging gameplay GTA fans have come to expect."

Verdict: Depends on when you think winter is. If you thought this meant the Christmas holiday, you were wrong. If you thought this could include March 17, a day that's just barely on the winter side of the vernal equinox, then you and Cammie were spot-on.

DS Non-Gaming Experiments

Dunaway describes experimental DS functionality that will inform you where your luggage is when you get off a plane and where a good restaurant might be. She says "this is all being tested," which isn't a promise that it will come out, but...

Verdict: Again, not a prediction, but also not something that has been released to the public yet. The only thing like it is the DS compatibility with SafeCo Field, which Dunaway also detailed.

MotionPlus Is Coming

Fils-Aime: There will be one Wii MotionPlus accessory and extended jacket packaged with every Wii Sports Resort. And of course others will be sold separately.

Verdict: This hasn't come true yet, but is on the verge of doing so in July.

Wii Sports Resort This Spring

Fils-Aime: "We began our presentation today with a single image in mind: smiling facings. And we believe there will be a lot more of them when Wii Sports Resort launches globally next spring."

Verdict: Ouch. Biggest mistake of the press conference. The game i slated for a June release in Japan but will definitely miss the spring in the U.S. and Europe, where it is scheduled for July.

Wii Music Will Be Fantastic

Fils-Aime: on Wii Music: "It's safe to say it will generate a lot of smiles - new smiles - in a whole new way."

Verdict: Subjective, but sure, why not? We'll give you this one, Reggie.

Wii Music Fulll of Instruments

Nintendo's chief game designer, Shigeru Miyamoto says that In Wii Music you're going to be able to play more than 50 different instruments just by moving your body, that you can save videos of your performance and , play each part of a song before combining your performances into an ensemble piece.

Verdict: Yes, Wii Music let gamers do all of that.

Note: No mention was made during the press conference of what would become the best-reviewed Wii game of 2008, World of Goo. Nor did Nintendo mention the fall (in Japan) launch of the DSi. So, arguably two of the proudest parts of Nintendo's 2008 future were not hyped at E3.

To Sum Up.... Nintendo's press conference was lambasted by hardcore fans, though not entirely for the reasons that the company can't score that well in this one-year-later review. Nintendo got the Wii Sports Resort date wrong, but stuck to accurate predictions otherwise. The problems were that the company just didn't promise that much stuff — not compared to Microsoft the day before. And what it did promise didn't prove to be as bold as exciting as, say, the company's Wii Fit announcement of the year before. As an honest conveyor of Nintendo's quality and quantity of game offerings for the next year, it was only good enough to merit a C.

Next Victim: Sony.

[PIC] - MTV Multiplayer

Analyst Michael Pachter told Kotaku a few months ago to expect supply constraints for Wii this season, and speaking to Forbes, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata seems pretty certain himself that's how it'll go down, again:

"We are really intending to increase the shipments to the U.S., especially compared to last year," says Satoru Iwata, Nintendo's global president and CEO. "However, I can't give you a 100% commitment [that you'll be able to find a Wii this holiday season]. What I can commit myself to is that Nintendo is going to do its best to supply as many Wii hardware units as possible in order to meet demand there."

A Wii Bit Short On Supplies [worst pun ever, Forbes!]

Hello, Everyone. My name is Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo Co., Ltd. Beginning today, I would like to deliver an interview that explains the vision and the development process behind the creation of Super Smash Bros. Brawl. But before we begin, I would like to offer an apology.

With the completion of the game falling behind schedule, we were unable to keep our promised release date, despite our greatest efforts in attempting to release this game on time. I would like to extend my most sincere apology to all of our customers that are anticipating the title's release, and also to our retailers.

SURPRISE "To say 'we expected it to sell' would be vain. If we had known the Wii and DS would expand so dramatically in such a short time, we wouldn't have had shortages, nor would we have had to raise our financial forecasts."

SADNESS
"[When I see articles saying forced shortages are part of our strategy], I honestly feel sad. Game machine production amounts are set about half a year in advance, so they cannot be easily changed. The concept of the Wii is 'a machine that makes people who play it smile.' We wouldn't use a strategy that is at odds with smiling. Getting as many people as possible to show us their smiles when playing a Nintendo game — that's the energy source that drives us."

BORED
"Things grow bad the moment they're left in the same position. In particular, people can grow tired of entertainment such as games, so in order to make sure the consumers who took up the DS and Wii don't loose interest, new ideas like Wii Fit will become essential from here on out."

POSITIVE
"I am super positive. In this business (being a company president) if you're not positive, you'll immediately get weakened and won't be able to continue. Also, if I didn't have a positive outlook, I definitely wouldn't be able to say something like 'expand the gaming population.'"

JOKING
"This year we will release a new system. That is, of course, a joke. Our goal is to show our 'answer' to how to make sure the game population that has increased through the Wii and DS doesn't end as a short-lived boom. Even with the DS, there are still things left to do."

...a television-programming feature for the Japanese market...[allowing users] to check television listings, run searches by keyword and genre, and highlight each family member's favorite programs.

Iwata also points out that the DS is already being tested in some museums and other public places in Japan to provide additional information to users, but for Nintendo to expect us to open the DS to get data at the drop of a hat, it's gotta give us information everywhere. And without functionality like mobile data transfer or GPS, we can't imagine that happening.

But maybe at the DS hardware continues to evolve...who knows? Here's hoping there's more coming than when Japan can catch dubbed reruns of Full House.

Nintendo Sets Game Plan to Keep Players (sub required) [via N4G]

Our own Mike "Michael" McWhertor is heading to San Francisco for a Nintendo event tomorrow. We imagine it'll be news similar to this, but we imagine with some surprises (and North American release dates). Check back for that!

Nintendo expects to sell 21 million Wii games for the 2006/2007 period, a bump of 23.5 percent and six million consoles.

The also said today they expect to sell 23 million DS and 100 million DS games. Thanks to the DS, Nintendo readjusted its annual net profit estimate by 20 percent.

Nintendo Co., the world's biggest maker of handheld video-game players, raised its full-year profit forecast by 20 percent on sales of its DS portable device and increased targets for Wii console software.

Net income will climb to 120 billion yen ($1 billion) for the year ending March 31, compared with an October estimate for 100 billion yen, the Kyoto-based company said in a preliminary statement to the Tokyo Stock Exchange today. Nintendo reported 98.4 billion yen profit a year earlier.

Nintendo's two-year-old touch-screen DS player and titles such as Nintendogs, an interactive pet game, are helping the company fend off competition from Sony Corp.'s PlayStation Portable device. Nintendo is also making inroads in the home console market after it sold twice as many Wii players as Sony's PlayStation 3 in Japan last year.

The company today raised its sales forecast for DS players this fiscal year by 15 percent to 23 million units and software by 22 percent to 100 million games. Sales of Wii games will reach 21 million games this year, compared with an earlier target of 17 million. The company left its target for Wii console sales unchanged at 6 million units.

Sales this year will probably rise to 900 billion yen, compared with 740 billion yen forecast in October and 509.2 billion yen a year earlier, the company said. Nintendo also raised it full-year dividend forecast to 480 yen, from the October estimate of 400 yen and 390 yen a year earlier.

Money, money, money, moooooney, MAAAAAAA-ney. Brian Crecente

Nintendo Raises Profit Forecast 20% on DS Game Sales (Update1) [Bloomberg]

Company president Satoru Iwata, who told Reuters last month that Nintendo may beat its own earnings forecast on strong sales of its DS handheld games, will attend the briefing.

Yes, yes, the DS prints money.

I suppose he could make some surprise non-financial announcements too, but I sort of doubt it. I do suspect he might be touting Wii numbers. That's right: Touting! Brian Crecente

Nintendo to brief on earnings outlook revision [Reuters]

And not by that much, too! Famitsu has passed out its Japanese industry awards to individuals who had the biggest impact last year. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata came in first with 201 votes, followed by Sony's Ken Kutaragi with 181 votes. In next, Blue Dragon creator Hironobu Sakaguchi received 126 votes. Nintendo's resident genius Shigeru Miyamoto and Metal Gear mastermind Hideo Kojima rounded out the top five with 41 and 33 votes respectively. Sure, laugh at Kutaragi, but he is a force to be reckoned with in gaming. (A kooky, bat-shit insane one, but a force nonetheless!) Brian Ashcraft

Industry Honchos Awarded [Joystiq]

Iwata, Mr. Nintendo himself, hit CNBC in Japan, to demo Wii Sports. Notice how no one gets brained with a flying Wii-mote in the short segment. Skip to two minutes in if you want to see Iwata work his charm on the lovely talking head. Brian Crecente

We are so not worried about sunlight and the Wii-mote. Once we get ours, we'll take it outside and look at it. Then, we'll take it inside, plug the it in and seal Kotaku Tower in duct tape so we can play Super Monkey Ball in pitch black darkness.

We've heard whisperings of Wii-mote sensor interference back at TGS, and recent chatter of OMG-Wii-mote-hates-sunlight has hit the intertubes. Game site Go Nintendo directs our attention to an Nintendo-interviews-Nintendo in which company CEO Satoru Iwata quizzes Product Development dude Akio Ikeda about apparent problems:

Iwata: This so-called 'beam' connecting the user and the television was something that had never been attempted before. Didn't you run into any difficulties during development?

Ikeda: In the early stages of development we ran into a number of problems that we hadn't anticipated, like the fact that the controller would react to fluorescent light, for example. Creating a mechanism that prevents the controller from responding to fluorescent light and sunlight may sound like low-profile activities, but it still gave us a lot to work on.

No worries! Iwata and the boys are on it! Bring on the sunlight. (Just keep it away from the sensor bar.) Brian Ashcraft

It Was a Prob [Go Nintendo]

For anyone who's ever had to the burning urge to fill notebooks with Nintendo President Satoru doodles, game site Go Nintendo points out how. Neat, but does anyone know how to draw Sony Computer Entertainment honcho Ken Kutaragi? Brian Ashcraft

More Here [Go Nintendo]

"We believe that each software should have its own price point depending on its volume, theme, contents or energies and time spent for the development, namely, the development costs," [Satoru Iwata] commented, continuing by saying that "once the suggested retail price is announced, we should stick to it."

He described the tendency of releasing games at a suggested retail price point which is then dropped by retailers and publishers in later months for various reasons (not really selling, promotions, sales, etc.) as an "unhealthy product cycle." He then went on to say:

"If the suggested retail price of any and all software is marked down in 6 months or 9 months, the customers will learn the cycle and wait for the discounting... which will simply aggravate the decreasing sales of new software."

Yeah, free markets are a bitch, aren't they, Iwata-san? Florian Eckhardt

Nintendo of Japan put up an English translation of its Corporate Management Policy Briefing, which features a Q&A with company bigwigs. When asked what Miyamoto was currently interested in, company prez. Satoru Iwata replied, "Miyamoto, who made Pikmin when he was gardening and Nintendogs after owning a dog, will answer his hobby today." Ah, that Iwata. Quite the kidder.

Cutting through the standard Touch Generations/Wii rhetoric, the legendary game creator actually offered this surprisingly insightful response, capped off with a typical Nintendo "I can't say anymore right now" kicker. Regardless, Miyamoto answered:

What am I interested in now? I am interested in many things. Maybe you'd love to hear that I recently owned a cat or lizard (laugh). But these are not the decisive factors for me to think about next games. Talking about Pikmin, for example, we were doing a lot of experiments on GameCube by having some concepts which were eventually resulted as Pikmin. It was just that I was doing gardening at that time, so I thought, 'Maybe this might fit into the concepts that we are experimenting now'. It is not that we made the game system because I wanted to incorporate my gardening hobby.

Hit the jump for the rest.

I like dogs and since I owned my dog, I thought that dogs could be a game. However, fact of the matter is, we could not think about the concrete way to make it a fun game. We, then, encountered the DS hardware and realized that we can finally make an application on that dog concept. I was a typical Japanese husband who has been neglecting family lives, but I am spending more time with my family now. I am now interested in how a family enjoys in one house, and that interest pretty much suits well with the concept of Wii hardware. In that sense, Wii will become a hardware which will satisfy my interests of the past 20 years or so, so that I am enjoying making software right now. Finally, I am doing something lately, but I think I need to refrain from talking about it today. Hopefully, I can tell you what it is in 6 months or so.

Whaddaya think, The Sims meets Mario? Brian Ashcraft

Read the Rest Here [Nintendo] via SPOnG

Ever since Nintendo pulled its products out of the design gutter and making everything white and clean, there have been rumors about Nintendo and Apple becoming bed buddies. What form this fantasy relationship would take (casual or hardcore) has always been speculation. A wet dream, if you will.

CNET.co.uk rumormongers that this union is could happen as buying Nintendo is not out of the question. The article, which reads like a Neo-GAF post, says:

Cisco was rumoured to be looking at a purchase of Nintendo earlier in the year, so the idea of Nintendo being bought is not outlandish in itself. Apple's market cap is $51.7bn (Nintendo's is $23.1bn), so it's got a fair bit of financial clout. If Apple wanted to buy Nintendo it could theoretically raise debt to cover the cost because it has a good credit rating, not to mention $6.34bn in cash reserves. However, a city analyst told Crave that agressive takeovers of Japanese companies can be difficult and expensive. Japanese companies use the keiretsu system of interlocking holdings and partnerships, which makes conventional takeovers exceptionally hard.

If there was an acquisition, CNET believes it would be a friendly one with Steve Jobs giving Nintendo Prez. Satoru Iwata nuggies and purple nurples. Brian Ashcraft

More Here [CNET] Thanks, Rog!

I've been as excited as the next ROM-hoarding pirate about the Wii's Virtual Console, especially at the news that Nintendo would be releasing retro titles for $12.50 or less, as reported by Ars Technica. I'm not against paying for copies of games I've already purchased in the past as long as the price was reasonable.

Unfortunately, it looks like Ars might have misinterpreted Nintendo Pres. Satoru Iwata's comments. In reading a translated clip from the quote's source magazine Famitsu, it sure sounds like Iwata was talking about new titles selling for that price, not older, previously-released titles. Not that new, smaller game experiences for less money is a bad thing at all, mind you. And it wouldn't surprise me if the retro download titles were priced in that range—it's just not official yet.

But perhaps more interesting is Iwata's throw-away comment—possibly a typo by Famitsu—that Nintendo DS titles will be available for download. Most DS games are too large to be held in the DS's flash memory, but perhaps a Nintendo-sanctioned flash cart could be in the cards? (Okay, probably not, but speculation is fun!) Joel Johnson

At the recent Nintendo press conference in which bossman Satoru Iwata announced that the Wii's release date would be announced around September, he also dropped this wee statement:

I have never thought the name was a mistake. Some people seem to have a problem with it now, but I think they'll grow to like it.

Really? People still have a problem with it? Brian Ashcraft

More Here [CNN]

From the Nintendo briefing yesterday in Japan, here's footage of the upcoming Pokemon Wii game. Low-res clip, but still looks pretty neat. That's company prez. Satoru Iwata rambling on in Japanese. Brian Ashcraft

Thanks, Jeff

Graphics whores, rejoice! If you were left feeling a Wii-bit empty from the polygonal stylings of Nintendos' crop of E3 titles, don't give up hope yet. The ATI folks responsible for the Wii's "Hollywood" graphics chip say you might just be surprised at the graphical tricks you'll see in the future—but it's also not just about the graphics.

I think what you saw was just the tip of the iceberg of what the Hollywood chip can bring to the Nintendo Wii. I really don't think that it's about the [specs]; I think it's about the innovation that it brings to the table—the motion-sensing, the always-on capability—the fact that the chip is powerful enough and responsive enough to be there at a moment's notice, and I think that's pretty cool for the average gamer.

Indeed. But what's up with that "always-on" thing? According to an interview with Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata, Nintendo is going to use the WiiConnect24 platform to send monthly demos to your DS—while you sleep! Scary, but cool! Michael McWhertor

ATI: Wii Graphics at E3 "Tip of the Iceberg"
Iwata: "Nintendo is not working on a next-generation console"