I spent the first half of this week hanging out with the likes of Michael Pachter, Peter Moore, Mike Gallagher and Nintendo of America's recently appointed vice president of marketing, Cammie Dunaway at Ziff Davis' Electronic Gaming Summit.

It was the first time I met Dunaway and we ended up chatting quite a bit during a dinner on the last night, hosted at a nearby vineyard, held in a castle of all places.

Dunaway, it turns out, had just flown in from New York where she helped kick off the launch of the Wii Fit in Central Park.

"I'm sure Wii Fit is going to sell very well," I told her, "but I suspect it's going to be like every other piece of exercise equipment people buy for themselves: In a few weeks or a month it's going to have laundry piled on it or be back in its box."

Not so, Dunaway insisted.

"Wii Fit incorporated the magic of video games," she said. "You get ranked, you unlock new levels, you can compete against each other, there's a lot of video game hooks that will help people stay motivated."

The next day, while reiterating our conversation to the summit during her speech, she added that there are also a lot of other exciting things that can be done with the balance board, specifically new games using it as a controller. Games like Namco-Bandai's skiing title or EA's Skate It or Ubi's upcoming Rayman title.

I buy the second argument, I'm not so sure about the first. But it's still a good model: You get people to buy the Balance Board by making people think working out will be fun, even though deep down everyone knows it really isn't, then you start releasing other games using the peripheral, removing the fit from the balance board and emphasizing the fun. It's almost a bait-and-switch, but without the negative connotations.

What I found more fascinating than Dunaway's insistence that Wii Fit, and not just the balance board, would be a game with lasting value, was her explanation of how Shigeru Miyamoto came up with the idea.

The story goes that Miyamoto placed a piece of graph paper on a wall in his house to track his weight and that every day he would plot it. Over time his family started questioning his weight gains and losses. Why did he lose weight on this day? Why did he gain weight on that day? That's when inspiration struck and Miyamoto went into the office and told his developers "Let's create a video game based on weighing yourself."

Can you imagine if anyone other than Miyamoto suggested that?

The average Wii gamer is a hardcore gamer, Nintendo of America's Cammie Dunaway told the Electronic Gaming Summit today.

Seventy-nine percent of Wii gamers are male, most older than 18 with an income of $50,000 or more and more than half game for five or more hours a week, Dunaway said.

While the people who buy Wii tend to be pretty typical for gaming, the other household members who play Wii aren't, she said.

About 45 percent of the other household members who play Wii are female, with 38 percent 25 or older. Sixty-five of these gamers play at least two hours a week, while only 32 percent play five or more a week.

"The real break-through, the real magic of the Wii console is that it brought new consumers into the game," she said. "We in the industry have a choice to make, do we want to appeal to the few or to the masses? Do we want to sell to more people or sell more and more and more to less people? Do we want to be inclusive or do we want to be expansive? At Nintendo we definitely believe in the power of the expanded audience.

"We hope everyone will join us in showing everyone just how much fun video games can be."

About 50 million games were sold for the Wii in its first 18 months, compared to about 42 million games in the first 18 months of the Playstation 2's life. The Xbox 360 came in at 30 million or so, the Xbox at roughly 28 million and finally the Playstation 3 at about 20 million.

Speaking to a gathering at the Electronic Gaming Summit, Cammie Dunaway, executive video president of sales and marketing for Nintendo of America, Dunaway used the numbers to launch into a talk about Nintendo's strategy for expanding the market.

Dunaway also showed a chart plotting out the first 18 months of each console's life. According to the chart, about 9.5 million Wii were sold in the first 18 months, 8.5 million PS2, 5.4 million Xbox 360, 5.2 million Xbox and 4.2 Playstation 3.

"While we appreciate the impact the Playstation 2 had on sales and the industry, perhaps we are even more impactful," Dunaway said, adding that there wasn't a single month in the Wii's first year and a half when Nintendo could meet demand.

Update: I just clarified with Nintendo: Those software sales numbers only include boxed games sold at retail and not virtual console or Wii Sports.

Moore was quick to point out that it wasn't Electronic Arts that asked for the exclusive deal, but rather the NFL which was seeking a single licensee. He said that EA feels that licensing remains an important part of adding realism to their sports titles and that he can't imagine a time when they wouldn't seek them.

Specifically, the weakness that EA faces when trying to deliver the same experience to the flood of new gamers brought into the fold by Nintendo's casual-centric Wii.

Moore said after speaking with focus groups who called their Wii sports titles a "joke" or the outcome of "spoiling a good game", they realized their approach to the Wii had to change.

"We weren't delivering the experience," he said. "We have to make it a little more approachable to allow them to get in early and quickly.

"We can't port content down to the Wii, we need to start building for the Wii from the ground up, that's what we are doing this year."

Specifically, they are doing that with their new All-Play brand which will bring Tiger Woods, NCAA, FIFA, NBA and Madden all to the Wii in versions built specifically for the console. Instead of trying to describe how that will be different, Moore booted up a Wii debug unit to show off how the alpha version of All-Play Madden will look and feel.

The idea with the All-Play games is to take a familiar brand, like Madden and make them "fun, stimulating, easy" Moore said, pointing out how All-Play Madden doesn't have "graphic intensity" but does give gamers a simple experience.

On first blush, the most noticeable change to the fabled franchise was the user interface. Cutting down on the slew of information-heavy, packed menus, the All-Star menu during play offered just three choices: Top picks, Madden's pick (which included a picture of Madden Mii) and all plays. Selecting one of the large buttons bring up a couple of options which can be quickly scrolled through.

It appeared that during Moore's time playing defense for us he controlled his player with the nunchuk's thumbstick and swatted the remote to play defense, either knocking the ball out of the air or tackling.

"There are no timeouts, no huddles, not a lot of penalties or interference plays," he said.

Next Moore showed us Five-On-Five mode which cuts down on the number of players on the field and features big-head players. Pausing the game while playing offense, Moore outlined the course a receiver was going to take in real-time by pointing to the field with his remote and clicking on a button. Each click created a waypoint. On several plays Moore used two or three waypoints when creating his play on the fly. After starting the game back up, the player ran his play.

"The idea is to make games a little more simple," he said.

Something, that from our brief time watching the game, Electronic Arts appears to have done.

Moore said EA plans to also market their All-Play titles differently, using less intense box art and different commercials.

When asked, Moore said that just because All-Play is meant to be an easier experience, it doesn't mean that the game can't still innovate.

"Innovation could come through more intuitive use of the Wii remote," he said, theorizing: "Can i get the Wii remote in 2010 to feel speed and have the ball react to it? That's just blue sky stuff, but that's some of the things you might see."

"We are still looking at ways we can replicate the experience without it being too difficult."

Speaking at the Electronic Gaming Summit this afternoon, Pachter said that he expects an overall slowdown in video game sales over the next three years.

Pachter expects the industry to see 19 percent growth in the U.S. and 20 percent in Europe this year, with his predicted price drop this holiday. Next year, Pachter expects growth to dip to 16 and 18 percent, unless the consoles drop another $100, which would add another five percent to growth. In 2010 growth will slow to 10 percent and seven percent, unless consoles drop in price by $150, Pachter said.

By the year 2011 Pachter predicts that the industry will flatline unless a new console is introduced.

Wait. That means that game sales will flatten out after six years unless we get a new console. There goes Microsoft's hopes for a seven year console and Sony's plans for a ten year one.

The concept, captured in blurry pics later that year, would allow gamers to access Live via a cellphone so they could check friend status, Achievements, all the data of Live, on the go.

Bell said not to give up hope. "Live anywhere is not abandoned, it's just not easy to do."

And then he never mentioned it again.

After walking the audience through his personal gaming history, which started with Pong in his early teens, Bell talked about gaming generations and how Microsoft works to extend their reach in the industry, reminding the audience that the Xbox is still the new guy in the console wars.

"We are the challenger brand in this category, this is our seventh year really," he said. "We're coming into our eighth holiday, from that stand point we are still the newbie."

Microsoft's plan to extend their reach includes courting large cross-platform titles, key categories and new types of gaming.

"We do wish to win critical cross-platform blockbusters," Bell said. "It's our vision to move away from just first-party...we also need to change the paradigm of how we partner with our third parties."

Microsoft also want to grow what they call key categories: sports, driving, family and innovative gaming.

"We must continue to be inspired by new types of game play," he said, pointing to Nintendo's upcoming release of Wii Fit. "We don't have the Wii Fit but we are happy to have the relationship with Konami on DDR. We are an also-ran compared to the Wii Fit, but we're not going to just say well done you deserve it."

"We are all looking for the twister of the 21 century."

Today, speaking at the 11th Annual Electronic Gaming Summit, Ziff Davis Media CEO Jason Young told the gathered summit members that the restructuring process will be wrapped up in June. More importantly, he noted that their $400 million debt will be reduced to a paltry $57 million, leaving them with the cash flow to invest back in their products, which includes 1Up, EGM and GameVideos.

Sounds like Simon Cox, , Vice President of Content for the 1UP network, hit the nail on the head when he said they would be bigger, better, faster, stronger when they came out of the restructuring.

Stay tuned later today for reports on talks given to this small group by Microsoft's Jeff Bell;, analyst Michael Pachter; Tanya Giles, of MTV; and the always energetic Peter Moore.