I've asked around on forums (both NWR and elsewhere), and it seems to be the general consensus that the Wii is indeed capable of direct Wii to Wii LAN play with not Internet involved. However, there has, to my knowledge, been no mention of this from anyone at Nintendo, or anyone else developing for the Wii. So I ask, do you think it's possible for direct Wii to Wii LAN play to become a reality, and more importantly, do you think it will ever be implemented? LAN play could potentially become a very strong part of games like Batallion Wars, and I'm hoping they aren't ignoring it.

- Dirk Temporo

Wiis are definitely capable of local LAN play, and there will eventually be games that use this feature in the future. The biggest reason why current games aren't using it is because it doesn't make much sense for local LAN play to be implemented in what's been released thus far. The bulk of the system's multiplayer games are of the party type, where everyone playing shares the same screen. Yeah, you could have more than four people using two Wiis and two TVs, but that's not very practical when considering the more casual audience those kinds of games are directed at. If you disregard the flood of mediocrity that was the initial batch of Wii FPS games—Red Steel, Far Cry, Call of Duty, etc.—what else would the hardcore set use local LAN multi-TV setups to play? Zip. No wonder Nintendo hasn't said much about it.

Those early shooters could have had LAN play had Nintendo gotten its act together sooner and dished out some Wii networking SDKs to help the developers implement the feature. That didn't happen, of course. But now developers have access to those tools and upcoming games will be natural fits for LAN play. The newly announced Medal of Honor game from EA will have 32-player online multiplayer and you can bet your lunch money that the game will support 32 player LAN play, too.

OK, so nintendo officially blew it at E3, and now I am starting to regret investing my hard earned money into the Wii. with the exception of Mario and Metroid, I feel that nintendo had nothing new or good to show for all of the success they have received over the past 8 months. There should have been more hardcore games out there, but instead they used past media clips to whore out the sucess of the Wii and then showed us WiiFit. Where was the online play, why didn't they talk about what their third party games, and where where games like Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles. The presentation seemed just a little too... All of a sudden the XBOX 360 is starting to look damn good, and so is Assassin's Creed. BTW I think the piece of plastic is shipping with a game or you could buy it separately. At least that is what I thought Reggie said.

- Disappointed Nintendo Fan

From the hardcore side of the fence, yes, Nintendo did have a terrible showing at its E3 press conference. The biggest announcement of the show was mentioned in passing: An online-enabled 32-player Medal of Honor game. If you push aside Mario, Metroid and Zelda (a trio that you might recognize from a previous E3), we got jack shit. Reggie's little speech about Nintendo "getting serious" about online gaming was a slap in the face to everyone in attendance. The "complete Wii gamer" is playing Pokémon Battle Revolution online, according to Reggie. Uh, no... the complete DS gamer is playing Pokémon Battle Revolution online. The real "complete Wii gamer" is wondering where a solid confirmation of Super Smash Bros. Brawl online play is. He or she is also wondering why Nintendo didn't have more than a handful of Wii online games to tell us about. Presumably Nintendo is saving these announcements for its own event later this year, but if it had an ace in the hole, E3 was the best stage to play it on.

However, this doesn't mean Nintendo's E3 was a total bust. There is this whole Blue Ocean market Nintendo is going after, and to it, Nintendo couldn't have done any better. I'll explain why that is a little later in the bag.

Just a quick question about DDR: Hottest Party. While the addition of Wiimote/Nunchuk motions seems like it could add to the game, I enjoy the original DDR and I'm not sure if that's something I'd want to use every time. Will there be an option to play classic-style with just the dance pad?

- j_moose
Michigan

Yes.

Do you think Nintendo realizes they are making a bunch of drinking games? I mean, Wii Sports was dangerous enough. What happens when someone gets drunk playing Wii Fit and falls through the TV?

- CincySportsFan25
Ohio

I thought the exact same thing after getting out of the press conference. Well, not the drinking part, but I have a sinking feeling that Wii Have a Problem will be getting busy again once Nintendo releases Wii Fit and the Wii Balance Board, whenever that may be.

Gimmicky controllers in the past have almost always failed to catch on. The Wii remote is an exception to this, almost certainly because it's the system's primary controller. (The other exception is the original Zapper, but that also came bundled with a great number of systems). Do you think the Wii Fit board has any hope of catching on? Might it be bundled with the system in future years? Or will it, like so many track and dance pads, be used in a couple of games, then abandoned?

- LuigiHann

The success of the Wii Balance Board ultimately lies in how the public receives Wii Fit, since the two will be packaged together. The more people that buy Wii Fit and the board, the more likely publishers will be to include support for it in their games. And so, the more people that buy games that include support for the Wii Balance Board, the more likely people will be to get the board. It's an cycle that needs a very, very strong push to set it into motion, kind of how like the wild success of Wii Sports got everyone to accept the potential of the Wii remote. Wii Fit is along the same lines as Wii Sports, Brain Age and Nintendogs, I really don't see why it won't take off like the Nintendo Trinity already has. The Balance Board, therefore, is probably going to be the Next Big Thing for Wii.

I didn't think that initially, though. During the finale of the Nintendo press conference, I wondered why the company spent so much time touting Wii Fit to the world, using Shigeru Miyamoto as the pitch man, no less. I walked out of the Santa Monica Civic Center wondering exactly what to make of the Wii Fit announcement while I thought about all the non-announcements from Nintendo during the conference. Once I got some feet-on time with the game, I understood what Nintendo was going for. You can read about what I think about Wii Fit in my E3 impressions, but in a nutshell it's a game that anyone and everyone can, and should, play. You know, like a Mario game. Which explained why Miyamoto was out showing it off to the world.

This is why I think Nintendo had a good E3 showing overall. It sucked for me, personally, and for just about everyone reading this site, but for that family who is still on the fence on whether or not they should get a Wii this holiday season, the blasts of positive Wii press and the promise of Wii Fit might push them over the edge. Nintendo knows it has created a perfect storm of mainstream hype with the Wii, and its goal at E3 was to keep it going for another holiday season. I'm pretty sure Wii sales aren't going to tank with its perceived sub-par showing; Wiis were going to be hard to find until next March at least no matter what Nintendo did at E3. But now that it has shown off Wii Fit to the world, a lot more people are going to be interested in the Wii phenomenon. How can anyone say Nintendo had a bad E3 when it can make that claim?