Animal Crossing and Wii Music are locks to be shown in some detail for the first time. One or both may involve a plan to package a peripheral with the software. Animal Crossing has a high probability of being a fairly conservative iteration, but may well provide for additional content available via Nintendo WFC Pay & Play.

There will be at least one first party title heavily geared towards, if not exclusively reliant on, the Wii Balance Board. A new WarioWare title is an obvious candidate, while WiiWare could also be another avenue for such games.

In terms of familiar Nintendo properties making a return, Pikmin and Kid Icarus seem to be the likeliest candidates based on media rumblings. Pikmin may well be another orthodox treatment of an existing GameCube game on Wii; the inevitable pointer controls and widescreen support would be most welcome, but any hopes of online co-op are rather optimistic.

With the coming of DLC to Guitar Hero: World Tour, Nintendo will quietly settle the storage question to some extent. Liberalising SD card utilisation is the most likely method. Voice chat functionality will probably continue to go unaddressed, unless it is somehow integral to an unexpectedly ambitious approach to Animal Crossing, Pikmin, or other projects.

Unlike last year, Nintendo will tease a game that is more than a year away from release during this E3. This will most likely be something to appease ardent Nintendo enthusiasts; perhaps a hint at the next instalment in the Mario or Legend of Zelda franchises, or the next project produced by Retro Studios.

Nintendo will be comfortable leaving the DS mostly to aggressive third party support (such as that demonstrated by Square Enix), while supplying core DS gamers with a modest flow of software composed mainly of remakes (Fire Emblem, Kirby, etc). A few original titles in this vein are possible, but not especially likely at this point in the hardware's life. It may be too soon for a full successor to the DS to be spoken of publicly, while a revision to the Lite is feasible, though far from inevitable.

Overall, expect Nintendo to speak loudest to the mainstream media rather than the enthusiast press, but also be prepared for more core-focused Wii games to be revealed than many have foreseen.