New Nintendo console expected to be announced at E3

It should come to nobody’s surprise that speculation has began that a new Nintendo console will be announced at E3 this year. What should be a surprise is what Nintendo has up its sleeve for that console. Sagging Wii sales and a glaring absence of future big name titles hitting the Wii this year have fueled the speculation. Even naysayers find it hard to explain the awkward radio silence from Nintendo regarding any Wii developments whatsoever. Perhaps the best teacher in this matter can be Nintendo’s history. The last Nintendo console before the Wii was the GameCube and in its last year leading up to the Wii announcement and release, all GameCube development became the equivalent of a large paperweight on Saturo Iwata’s desk. The games released that year were….umm…yeah, exactly my point. And if you’re still not convinced that a new Nintendo console is headed for an announcement at E3 2011, Nintendo has maintained a five to six year console release schedule since the Super Nintendo. The only time Nintendo deviated from this time frame was with the introduction of the Super Nintendo, coming seven years after the NES. Nintendo can’t offer any peripheral to re-ignite its Wii sales like the Kinect has for the Xbox and the Move has for the PlayStation 3. The Wii is outdated, regardless of it being a fun and casual game console. Sure it reinvented the living room by shifting the focus of the game play onto the game player but that isn’t enough any more for it to survive in a world of social media, connectivity, and high definition. Hell, even analysts have started predicting a new Nintendo console later this year, as shown in this Gamasutra article by (one of my favorite) game journalist Leigh Alexander. So now that I’ve beaten into your head that a new Nintendo console will be revealed at E3, lets start speculating as to what it will bring to the table! And no, saying that it will feature 3D is not a valid speculation, since that is more or less a given. Personally, I think the next Nintendo console is going to let us perform a Jedi mind trick or two (hint hint).