GoNintendo managed to grab an interview with Denise Kaigler, Vice President of Corporate Affairs for NOA. This is the Nintendo executive that took a lot of flack after last years E3 conference for smiling too much and concentrating too much on the casual gamer! While the Nintendo conference itself was very poor in 2008, that should hardly be blamed on Denise.

The GoNintendo team certainly think that the negative criticism she received was unfair and I’d have to agree as from what we’ve seen of Denise, she is very passionate about Nintendo, her job and the industry as a whole.  The interviewer even thought their time spent with Kaigler was their highlight of the show!

Here’s a snippet of the interview.

I was surprised to see no WiiWare titles shown during Nintendo’s E3 press conference. WiiWare wasn’t even mentioned. What’s up with that?

We are pleased that there’s been so much buzz about some of the games. …We only have an hour…there’s so much information to put on that state. There’s only so much that we can… You guys see every Monday that we have the Nintendo Download.

Sticking with WiiWare, I really stressed how important I believe advertising is. Print ads, and even commercials that showcase 15 games in a 30 second spot…I think all of these things could be great. Will we see anymore bigtime advertising for WiiWare, and DSiWare?

There are opportunities to do all of that. We never say never. We understand that WiiWare is a really big opportunity. We understand that there’s a pent-up demand and longing for that (type of advertising).

Nintendo seems to be taking what works on DS, and moving it over to Wii. New Super Mario Bros., Mario Kart DS, Animal Crossing: Wild World. All of these received/are receiving Wii versions. Is it Nintendo’s intention to bring what works on DS over to Wii, while keeping the approach of the DS titles nearly the same?

What we do is look at games that make sense to apply to Wii. Same thing can be said of Virtual Console games. We’re always looking at ways to make the experience more fun and more compelling for gamers. If we look at a DS game and see that a Wii version…experience can be enhanced, then that’s what we do. We don’t just do it for the sake of doing it. If we can make that experience more fun, more compelling, more immersive…that’s what drives that decision.

You can read the whole thing over here.