• Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Tuesday, June 15, 2010 10:45 AM

Nintendo will unveil a 3-D portable game player this morning at the E3 game conference in Los Angeles, Pavel Alpeyev and Masatsugu Horie report. The company says that the 3DS model that president Satoru Iwata will introduce represents the biggest overhaul of its handheld player since 2004. Among other features, it will probably feature a camera that tracks users, with the 3-D picture adjusting as they move.

"The expectations for the 3DS are extremely high," says Yuuta Sakurai, a Tokyo-based analyst at Nomura Securities Co. "Starting with the DS and Wii, the company has consistently released products that no one could imagine and I think this time, too, they will not fail to surprise."

The player likely will display sharper images than the Wii game console, says Ace Securities analyst Hideki Yasuda. And the 3DS could signal a shift to Nintendo's focusing more on upgrading the hardware -- a departure from its emphasis on software, he says. The product also may have a miniature motor that vibrates in response to a user's actions, and also may come with unlimited wireless connectivity.

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