E3 2011 Nintendo Press Conference Wrap Up

Nintendo’s press conference is over and it wasn’t quite what I had expected but it was still not terrible. The press conference started out with a live orchestra playing pieces from previous games in the Zelda franchise and that was pretty cool to see and hear. Shigeru Miyamoto came out and told us all, via translator, about the Zelda music concerts coming and about the releases of several Zelda titles for various Nintendo systems.
The press conference then began in earnest when Mario Kart, Star Fox, Super Mario, and Kid Icarus were all confirmed and shown off for the 3DS. The games looked impressive and were all new adventures, not ports of previous games which is good news.
Project Café then took center stage and it was revealed that the actual title for the console would be Wii U, I was a little surprised by the title and actually like Café over Wii U. The controller, which features a 6 inch touch screen, was show off extensively but we didn’t really get to see the console itself or many specs regarding the power of the hardware. The controller was shown doing some impressive tracking and some in-game examples of uses were shown that were impressive. Tracking down a fly ball or fighting off aliens looked pretty cool with the new controller, even though the controller itself seemed really bulky.
The announcement of a Mario game for the Wii U was well received as this will be the first Mario launch title since the N64. Third party developers then took the stage and showed off some clips of upcoming games for the Wii U. Ghost Recon Online, Darksiders, Aliens: Colonial Marines, and Ninja Gaiden III were all shown off and all looked pretty good. I was the most impressed by the Ninja Gaiden III gameplay but all in all the system looked like it was on par with the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 and not the next generation experience we were looking for.
Nintendo also spoke a little about their vitality sensor but that thing still seems pretty useless to me. All in all I wish there had been more information about the console itself, the price point, and games that were running in full 1080p so the graphics could really shine. It seemed like a bit of a lackluster performance from the new console as we really only saw the controller featured, but the games and the functionality seemed pretty good. Overall, a decent showing from Nintendo, what did you guys think?