How Nintendo can win E3 2011

Alright, chuckles; before you chime in with a "they can't" and scuttle back off to calculating how many days it is before you hit your next Prestige rank, maybe you should remember the Wii is the biggest selling console this generation. If past performance is any indication, it's never wise to bet against Nintendo - unless you did with the Virtual Boy, which was more painful than being subject to a Soujla Boy music video on infinite loop. But enough about the past! This year Nintendo is heading to the future.

Nintendo's E3 2011 conference takes place on June 7 at 09:00 PDT/17:00 BST. VideoGamer.com will be covering the event live, but here's what we think they should be showing if they want to best their gaming rivals:

Project Cafe

Seeing as interest in the Wii seems to be waning, Nintendo needs to really make sure that Project Cafe isn't complete guff. We've heard enough rumours to fill almost an entire issue of Heat magazine, but if Nintendo is going to go ahead with another wacky control method it's going to have to keep confidence high amongst both core and casual gamers.

A casual audience will be interested in knowing the price - it needs to be low. That seems plausible, especially considering rumours suggest it'll pack about as much power as the 360 and PS3. It'll also be very important for Nintendo to demonstrate why buyers should consider an upgrade - why get rid of your Wii when it has a perfectly good version of Mario Kart, Wii Fit, and Wii Sports Resort.

The core audience, however, will be interested in first-party titles and decent third-party support. The latter is especially important - third-party support on the Wii was more shambolic than both Wii Music and Vitality Sensor combined. Most major publishers - such as EA and Activision - will want to see it easily possible to port their software libraries over without the controller ruining everything and the end result looking like it's been interpreted to the Wii by a particularly busted Atari 2600 that can't understand colour.

Both audiences, however, will need to see this machine's 'Wii Sports' moment. One of the major failings of the 3DS launch is that there's nothing out which properly sells you on the technology itself, which is the exact opposite of what happened the first time somebody picked up a Wii Remote and tried their hand at tennis or bowling.

Sure, latent cynicism for the Wii might cloud some peoples' judgement, but just imagine if Nintendo actually manage to pitch Project Cafe to both core and casual audiences and bag that lucrative, identity-defining money shot?