Nintendo Wii HD / Project Cafe rumor roundup: What will E3 hold for the gaming giant

Surprises are expected from all of the big three this year — particularly Nintendo. How will the gaming giant top last year’s 3DS debut? All signs point to the announcement of a Wii followup, which we’ve heard alternately referred to as the “Wii HD” and “Project Cafe.” Rumors, leaks, and the occasional bit of confirmed information have been rampant in the months and weeks leading up to the event. We’ve weaved it all together into one handy guidebook, to make sure that we’re all on the same page, come Tuesday morning.

Let’s start with a genuine bit of information: back in April, the company’s CEO, Satoru Iwata, confirmed that Nintendo is, in fact, working on an HD followup to the Wii that is most likely due out in 2012. A few days prior to that revelation, the requisite blurry images of console concepts surfaced, detailing controllers with embedded touchscreens that display the system’s 1080p gameplay via a technology called Stream Screen. These certainly weren’t the first concepts of the console we’ve seen — and they were apparently first brought to light by the folks at 4Chan.

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