With the announcement of Sony?s PlayStation Portable (PSP), Nintendo seemed to begin sweating at their press conference Tuesday, but regained some confidence as the meeting progressed.
Even though Nintendo President, Satoru Iwata, and Nintendo of America?s Senior Vice President, George Harrison, appeared to be on edge at the start of the conference, Iwata assured the attendees that because Nintendo is in control of the handheld market, they were not worried.
Nintendo started their conference off by admitting where they had gone wrong in the past and one of their main faults, said Iwata, was that they did not have enough exclusive titles. He followed this statement with the announcement of new versions of Metal Gear Solid, a prequel to the hit series titled Twin Snakes, The Sims, as well as a new F-Zero, all to be released only for the GameCube.
Other products that were demonstrated and announced included a Pac-Man where three players pick up GameCube controllers to manipulate the ghosts, while a fourth uses the GameBoy Advance and a connection cable to move Pac-Man around. The GameBoy player is given the traditional Pac-Man view, while on the TV, the three ghosts see only a limited, but three-dimensional view of the board. This as well as products like Legend of Zelda: Four Swords and the GameBoy Player (a device to attach to your GameCube so that you can play your GB games on your TV) were to boast Nintendo?s idea that the future of the game industry is through connectivity and to show that they are not going to go down without a fight.
Iwata also announced a third-party outreach program, which brings Nintendo, Sega and Namco together in what is called the Triforce Initiative.
