During an interview with Mercury News, Nintendo's resident ass-kicker and name-taker Regie Fils-Aime spoke about the problems with Wii supplies and the demise of E3 as we knew it, commenting on the phoenix that has risen from the ashes. His take: the new E3 is just important as the old E3. Reggie say wha?
See, Reggie says that Nintendo will still continue to hold their big press conference every year at the event, as they had in the past (which was already confirmed), and sees the show now as focused more on North America. Wasn't the show always focused on North America? Regardless, we wouldn't say the new E3 is as important as the E3 of year's past, from our perspective. Now smaller press outlets will be denied access and that really boils down to hurting you guys, the readers.
In speaking about the still-woefully-absent-from-retail-shelves Wii, Reggie said "we [Nintendo] are all acutely aware of the issue and we all realize we have a limited period of time to address the issue." The limited amount of time comes from the knowledge that consumers aren't going to wait forever for consoles to be on store shelves and eventually will just give up on the Wii altogether.