Coming inside from early morning Los Angeles sunshine, the press was greeted by a darkened auditorium with flashing strobes and blue lasers, several large screens onstage featuring Nintendo trivia, along with blaring upbeat music. I had the niggling sensation that I had been out all night and was now attending some sort of gaming-related afterparty. An afterparty where I sat and watched Nintendo play for an hour and a half with 1,499 strangers.

Nintendo is well-known for marching to the beat of a different drummer, zigging when the rest of the industry zags--enough so that analysts have occasionally compared Nintendo (favorably) to Apple as an industry leader that puts innovation ahead of what seems marketable at the time.

That's paid huge dividends with the Wii and the DS, though Nintendo seems to have played a very conservative hand for this show. Talking points included the new Wii Motion Plus add-on, new games and follow up titles to popular existing games for both Wii and DS platforms. Then there was the oddball--the Wii Vitality Sensor.

According to Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo executive vice president of sales and marketing, the Wii Motion Plus is an improvement in product design that will increase movement precision. Nothing too titillating there, though it's sure to be a welcome addition to gamers who feel that the standard Wii controller is too sloppy. Nintendo's crowd-pleasing president Reggie Fils-Aime showed it off, and told the crowd that "every mistake [they] make will be faithfully reflected in the game." How reassuring. The Wii Motion Plus is coming out in July.

Nintendo had no new gaming platforms to talk about--the company is still firing on all cylinders with its Wii console and DSi handheld system. So it's little wonder, then, that Nintendo's presentation was strongest on games this year. Announcements about new ames like Golden Sun DS, Metroid: The Other M, and Super Mario Galaxy 2 garnered a loud and enthusiastic crowd response.