E3 as a whole last year was uneventful and it felt downsized. The only surprise was the early news of Wii MotionPlus, as a teaser on Nintendo's website the day before the main Nintendo conference. Last year saw Nintendo, and the industry in general, be a little more conservative. I think that this year there will be more surprises when compared to last year, since companies are probably saving their announcements for big events like E3. With E3 '09 trying to return as it was a few years ago, I think it will be an interesting event.

I think that there will be a big focus on Wii MotionPlus, and hopefully Wii Speak in their online multiplayer space. I think there will be bigger first and third-party support in the latter half of '09 than there was in the first half of the year. I also predict that Nintendo will have a larger focus on WiiWare/DSiWare with games and applications. On the DSi side of things, we will see Nintendo announce DSi-enhanced retail games, and probably introduce a Virtual Portable platform with Gameboy/Color games for $5 each and GBA games for $8 each. I think that there will be other platforms on the service as well, such as GameGear and NeoGeo, as both companies support the Virtual Console.

As for third parties, we recently found out one of the hidden Capcom games that they will unveil at E3 is Tatsunoko vs Capcom. I predict that the other hidden game is Monster Hunter 3 as the game wasn't formally announced by Capcom USA, even though the company has stated that they want to make the series more popular outside of Japan. I also predict that the bigger third parties will have major Wii game announcements, as there are some interesting rumors floating around.