The first day at the E3 Media Festival started with the press conference of Nintendo, in the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. The bulky statue (more on that later) of Reggie Fils-Amie (pictured above, center) moves onto the stage -- he's the president and COO of Nintendo America, and well known for his pompous talk. He starts off by saying:

My Name is Reggie. And I'm happy!

Announcements and accomplishments hail down on the many hundreds of professionals, who assembled: Since the release of the Nintendo DS, the number of portable consoles increased (compared to all other consoles) from 30 percent in 2002, to 50 percent in 2006. And the Nintendo DS takes up 23 percent of the cake. „By the way“, Fil-Aime smirks, „the other 27 percent is our GBA!“ It is also due to Nintendo, so they say, that the number of older people playing is on the rise: Compared to 2005, the number of gamers older than 18 years, has increased to 53% -- a 10% plus. And while in 2005, 78% of all games sold, went to minors, the number will decrease to 60% in 2007. The message they try to send is: Nintendo expanded the market. The release of the Wii, some 33 weeks ago, is considered a huge success as well and Nintendo plans to add 100 additional games to their portfolio till early 2008.

What follows is, as we think, rather awkward: It's not the introduction of the Wii zapper, a kind of Lightgun, used for upcoming games like Resident Evil – The Umbrella Chronicles, Medal of Honor or Ghost Squad. But rather it's price. 20 $ (US) –- the crowd starts to mumble. Come on! The Zapper is a trivial piece of plastic, fabricated in China, to which you'll have to add the Wii controller in order to have it work. How about some wood and duct tape? Okay admitted, the trigger would be missing though.

Next up: Fils-Aime tries to cover up the huge weakness of the Wii. It's online capabilities. Just until recently, there's been not a single game that allows you to play against friends via an internet connection. Super Smash Bros. Brawl, coming on December 3rd, 2007 and Guitar Hero III will be some of the next games to allow just that. Plus, Nintendo will unleash one of it's strongest titles, Mario Kart Wii, not before the first quarter of 2008. Which by the way, will come with another piece of plastic, the Wii Wheel and online capabilities for up to 16 players.

But where's Miyamoto? We saw him sitting in the first row, at the beginning of the press conference, looking somewhat dead beat. Just until he left back stage. So there he was! But first, Nintendo overlord Satoru Iwata takes his time. As usual, at conferences like this, he talks about his passion for games and states, that he cooks for his family from time to time, since the Nintendo DS version of Cooking Book is already available in Japan. Followed by a presentation of Super Mario Galaxies.

Finally, here he comes: Shigeru Miyamoto (pictured above, left) is about to enter the stage, after three fitness guys and girls take their place on the stage. WiiFit is the next assault on the mass market. WiiFit is a board, consisting of two weighing machines. One for each foot, measuring their weight-load. The machine will transform these information into game data. Which they demonstrate by showing off a ball game, where the player has to move his alter ego by quickly changing the pressure on the WiiFit. But you could use it as a fitness tool as well. And in the end, the WiiFit is also just a weighting machine, as Fils-Aime learned: Body-Mass-Index 27.51, which results in an overweight looking Mii avatar. „You know, my clothes are heavy. And muscles are heavier than fat“, the America COO defends himself, as the crowd giggles. So, strangely the Nintendo presentation ends with a clear focus on casual games, compared to the core games. After the show, Miyamoto tells one of our colleagues, that he would have preferred it the other way around, but that's the way the guidelines were set.