Leave it to Nintendo to fly in under the radar and knock the socks off those that sat down for the company's press conference at 10:30 AM at Los Angeles' Biltmore Hotel.  While Microsoft and Sony had fancy press conference setups, replete with automated concert lighting, Nintendo had a modest setup with a red curtain and a bunch of white Klieg lights.  The focus here was on the content, and as far as E3 press conferences go, Nintendo did just about everything right. 

Although many in the industry are quick to dismiss Nintendo as a toy company that doesn't play in the big leagues, one only needs to realize that today's 20 and 30 year old hardcore gamers grew up on Nintendo and Mario.  Hence, it's not surprising that when Nintendo started to unveil its games for the GameCube (due November 5^th for $199), the audience genuinely seemed excited by the video presentation of titles such as Super Smash Brothers and Luigi's Mansion, an intriguing adventure best classified as Ghostbusters meets The 7^th Guest.

Before rolling out the GameCube lineup, Nintendo vice president Peter Main spent some time outlining Nintendo's continued success.  After all, the new GameBoy Advance, shipping June 11^th, will go virtually unchallenged as far as handhelds go.  The GameBoy market is a US $2 billion industry; Nintendo has virtually 100% of the market.   To many inside of Nintendo, the GameCube is just more icing on the cake. 

One of Nintendo's Japanese board members took the stage and spent four or five minutes outlining what he called "The Nintendo Difference."  Whereas press conferences are usually void of any though-provoking discussion, this part of the presentation turned out to be remarkably insightful.  The board member spoke about how games today have too much emphasis on graphic horsepower, in addition to the fact that the game industry relies far too much on sequels. (The latter was admittedly a rather peculiar point, coming from the home of the Pokemon assembly factory).  Nevertheless, heads were visibly shaking in agreement as Nintendo summed up the state of the game industry – it's clear the Nintendo big wigs in Japan realize what makes a good game console.  If anyone doubted what they were hearing, they only needed to sit on their hands for a few minutes until the GameCube software was officially unveiled.