A+E Interactive

Here’s some pictures of the Nintendo press conference held at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood, where the Academy Awards are held every year. Almost 3,000 people filed into the theater to get a glimpse at the news. The headlines: The Nintendo Wii will debut in the fourth quarter but the company wouldn’t give an exact price or date. George Harrison, senior vice president of Nintendo of America, said that the price would likely be well below Sony’s price, and probably Microsoft’s as well. He said he was surprised that Sony showed so many cards the previous night in terms of pricing and dates. Nintendo said there will be 27 playable games on the floor at E3, and Harrison said they would likely have around 20 launch titles. One of them will be The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess, which will take advantage of the new controller. A GameCube version will debut at the same time this fall.

Most of the titles appeared to be franchises such as Mario and Metroid. But there were some original titles such as Wii Sports and a title called Orchestra, which game designer Shigeru Miyamoto demonstrated at the opening of the event. Harrison wasn’t that upset about Sony launching a very similar game controller. "You never have a lead for long in this business," he said."It’s what you do with it that matters and we have a lot of titles to show how you take advantage of the controller. They don’t." He noted there is already a joke on the Internet: "At Nintendo, R&D stands for research and development. At Sony, it stands for rip off and duplicate."

Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata emphasized the themes of disruption, originality, and creativity in his talk. Nintendo invited one gamer up on stage to play the tennis game, to hiliarious effect. John Taylor, an analyst at Arcadia  Investments, said, "They are staying on their own path, stubbornly, and it may just be where the market is going to be. On the tennis game, it’s clear there is a social element to this."