Like many, I was utterly bewildered by Nintendo's E3 2008 press conference. The missing "core" game announcement was disappointing, but not quite as unsettling as the unshakable notion that I was ultimately wrong about Nintendo's intentions towards gamers who've stuck with it since the beginning.

And as I walked out, I had the concentrated sense that as a longtime Nintendo fan, I was being forgotten, or at best, misunderstood.

With an hour to burn at its E3 conference, Nintendo offered up Wii Sports Resort, Wii Music, Animal Crossing: City Folk and just a few others, plus a swift mention of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars on DS to get those pesky 18-24 year-old males out of the way. See? We've got something for everyone.

What's troubling isn't that the title for hardcore gamers never materialized--it's that Nintendo thought it had.

"How could [core gamers] feel left out?" Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime asked CVG. "The Animal Crossing that we've been hearing about that people wanted. Fully connected to the Internet, go to other people's towns. Plus as I said, Grand Theft Auto on the DS. How do you feel left out with those types of announcements?"

As it turns out, pretty easily.

Regardless of what Fils-Aime believes, Animal Crossing: City Folk is not a "core" game. While its fans are most certainly a dedicated bunch, the title itself serves a particular gameplay niche that is not easily relatable to traditional gamers, least of all the hardcore audience.

The one offering in Nintendo's conference that could be construed as valuable to core gamers, the Wii MotionPlus peripheral, was only demonstrated alongside Wii Sports Resort, a game that simply didn't matter to that particular audience.

Nintendo marketing VP Cammie Dunaway later told Wired that she thought Nintendo was "addressing both [hardcore and casual gamers]," adding that she hoped that third-party games such as Treyarch's Call of Duty: World at War would deliver for the core audience. As for the Wii MotionPlus, Dunaway said that she expected the device--slated for a Spring 2009 release--to "very rapidly" spawn sequels to existing games.

What core audience is available to Nintendo isn't looking to the Wii for a Call of Duty experience, or the Nintendo DS for Grand Theft Auto. There are other platforms where those franchises are more richly realized, and compared to those versions, the titles are seriously limited on Nintendo's hardware.

And while games like Star Wars The Clone Wars: Lightsaber Duels could potentially show those gamers the possibilities afforded by the MotionPlus, developer Krome Studios didn't have a chance to implement the device prior to E3, because they likely weren't aware of it. With improved functionality in the pipe, Krome's efforts this fall—along with those of numerous other Wii developers--will ship with a sort of built-in obsolescence.

Most core gamers who own the Wii also own an Xbox 360, a PlayStation 3 or both, rendering titles like the Wii edition of Call of Duty: World at War rather unimpressive in the shadow of other beefier versions. The Wii can't win with meager ports that feature waggle controls; the core gamers that Nintendo can and ought to attract are looking for the excellent gameplay that served as a cornerstone to the company's storied past.

And Nintendo does have those titles, coming from both its in-house development and as part of its third-party support. While Nintendo's executives and the legendary Shigeru Miyamoto yukked it up in the Kodak Theater with Shaun White Snowboarding and Wii Music, a handful of excellent games were being quietly demonstrated on the E3 show floor.

Rhythm Heaven, a North American localization of Nintendo's formerly Japan-only and utterly brilliant Rhythm Tengoku series, wasn't even announced at the conference; the official word was slipped into the post-show PR documents. And when I asked to play Wario Land: Shake It!--arguably one of the most beautiful 2D games created in the last decade--before Wii Music at Nintendo's booth tour, the representative looked at me like I had just crapped in her hat.

Perhaps worst of all, one of the most exciting pieces of Nintendo news to come out of E3—the revelation of a new Pikmin title in development—had to be pried out of Miyamoto at a roundtable discussion. Even as little as a terse mention and a logo could have turned a lackluster E3 conference into something special.

Turn the page for more evidence of Nintendo's burgeoning disconnect with core gamers, and ideas as to how they might make things right.