Here's an essay I posted on a defunct E3 blog, Wiishfulthinking. Too busy with my Mac stuff to keep a game blog going unfortunately, but thought you guys might enjoy this. PS, if you haven't picked up a Nintendo DS lite for yourself yet, I highly recommend one, it's a great console with the best Nintendo game library in generations. (Console generations that is.)

Nintendo's E3 press conference left me pretty satisfied. I think it's fair to say that they delivered a healthy lineup of video game support for the Wii. I mean, who can complain with both Mario and Link slated to power the Wii launch? As for the reveal of the last big Wii hardware secret, it sounds like a great idea to me. All right, it isn't exactly total immersion 3D laser goggle technology, or whatever you were expecting, but still, who can't get excited by the idea of hearing an arrow whiz out of your hands and into an enemy?

In a lot of ways, the conference reminded me of a classic Steve Jobs Macworld Expo keynote performance. Flashy new software and updates, sleek hardware revisions and reveals, and of course a really excited and responsive audience. Iwata is no Steve Jobs, in terms of on-stage charisma, but he had plenty of great news to deliver to a ready audience, and deliver it he did.

As Iwata started talking about the DS's successes, the importance of the virtual console, and the Wii's ability to act as a constantly connected hub for online game events, messages, presents, and more, my mind went on a natural tangent. Apple's biggest success in recent years has been the fruit of Steve Job's strategy of creating a seamless digital media experience for the consumer, with "iLife" and the "digital hub". For an example, the unholy trinity of the iPod, the Mac, and iTunes allowed Apple to provide a totally controlled, seamless, easy to use digital music experience. These factors helped Jobs convince music company execs to approve iTunes Music Store.

Hindsight's 20/20, so we may as well take a clear look back now at Apple. Before the iPod exploded, and before iTunes Music Store dominated the digital music download industry (in fact, even before iTunes was out for Windows), Steve Jobs largely had it set. How? He had a few critical items under his belt.

First, he had an already successful, critically praised music player under his belt, the iPod, with customers itching to fill theirs up with music.

Second, he had the Macintosh, the flagship Apple hardware product that was the perfect method of introducing the iPod and iTunes Music Store, and a legion of loyal users that had been using Macs their entire lives.

Oh, and he also had the rights to exclusively (at the time) sell the largest legal digital music catalog in the world, at à la carte prices. 

Sound familiar?

It's not hard for me to imagine the day where I can boot up my Wii, turn on Virtual Console, test out a few games on time limit demos, purchase them, and synch them wirelessly and automatically to my DS, equipped with a Virtual Console game cartridge. And Nintendo hasn't revealed the final form of Virtual Console yet, so online multiplayer for all (or select) virtual console titles over Nintendo Wi-fi is still a possibility. Online Goldeneye to go anyone?

In other words, imagine a world where portable video games are as ubiquitous of a form of portable entertainment as music is,  DS's are as common and indispensible as iPods, video game downloads are as cheap as song or album downloads, and Nintendo is back on top again. 

I was waiting for a while after Iwata started talking about the virtual console and the DS, hoping, just hoping for that little reveal that the DS would play virtual console games, interfacing with the Wii wirelessly. You see, I'm used to waiting. Apple Keynotes always peak at the end, as Steve Jobs has a habit of saving the best for last, with his famous "oh, and one more thing..."

Unfortunately in this case, that "one more thing" never came, and the keynote eventually ended on a rather anticlimactic note. But that doesn't mean this can't (or won't) happen. Things can change, fast, and Nintendo is heading off in the right direction. Right now, they have the exclusive and high quality game catalog, the hub to introduce it through (the Wii), the loyal consumerbase, and the infrastructure to sell and distribute the games prepped and ready. All that's left is the popular portable game console, painlessly and wirelessly synchronizing with your Wii Virtual Console library. In fact, wait... the popular portable game console is already here, and it's called the Nintendo DS. So I suppose, in the end, to make this happen, what we need is a little flash drive in the form of a DS game cartridge containing versions of the Wii VC emulators ported to the DS, with some additional space for the games. Is this too much to expect from our beloved company?

Your move Nintendo.

Update, 5/12: Miyamoto recently revealed some more details on plans for connectivity between the Wii and the DS in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz. Though the technology for connectivity is in place, according to Miyamoto, "[We] have yet to cement plans with regard to how best to utilise it." According to the interview, possible connectivity features were discussed including options to use the DS as a controller, or to download, edit, and upload content to the Wii. The latter could imply Virtual Console connectivity (editing though?), but even if not, I'm banking now that Nintendo has this covered.