The Games Convention 2004, a consumer show that is growing immensly fast, and is quickly becoming one of the biggest gaming shows in Europe, is currently being held in Leipzig, Germany. Cube-Europe reporter Jan is currently sniffing around at the show and will bring us a full report in the near future. Until then we are here to tell you all about the press conference hosted by Nintendo of Europe at the show today!

Just before the conference started members of the press were speculating what they'd be shown by Nintendo of Europe. Will Nintendo of Europe surprise us? Will they have anything new to show after the E3?

We don't want to burst your bubble, but the conference started off almost exactly like at the E3 2004 in Los Angeles, with exciting music and nice footage taken from different upcoming games.

After the grand opening show Bernd Fakesch, general manager at Nintendo of Europe, opened the press conference and welcomed the press. He then started throwing some numbers at us showcasing the success of the GBA in Europe having sold 51 million in Europe, and 170 million worldwide!

Fakesch continued his speech by explaining that Nintendo is the strongest growing in the console market. Combine the market share of the GBA and GameCube, and you have yourselves a winner. Also, the GameCube itself has been outselling the Xbox in some countries in Europe, including Germany, one of the biggest video game markets in Europe. For more info on Nintendo's market share in Germany click here.

Then an intermission followed in which press was shown footage of the upcoming pokemon games on the GBA. The next video shown contained footage of all the big upcoming GameCube games including: PoP2, Killer 7, Resident Evil 4, Second Sight, Geist, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, Custom Robo, Baten Kaitos, Megaman, WWE Day of Reckoning, GoldenEye, VJ2, Zelda: The 4 Swords, Mario Tennis, Paper Mario 2, ToS, Donkey Konga, Animal Crossing and Pikmin 2.

Then suddenly Nintendo surprised its audience with two man drumming as a warm up for... you guessed it!... Donkey Konga! And Donkey Konga demo was launched, showing off the gameplay, and some of the European songs (song list)!

Totally unexpected Shigeru Miyamoto also made a video appearance at the conference! He spoke some friendly german words, after which he explained the features of the Nintendo DS. For more information on the Nintendo DS please check out the Cube-Europe specials and hardware section.

Next was the E3 video in which developers tell how much they love developing for the Nintendo DS. The E3 Zelda video was shown as the conference wrap-up leaving all the members of the press drooling in their chairs...

In all, not a whole lot of new stuff was shown besides some gameplay demo's of the European version of Donkey Konga. However, it was worth to sit through the conference to see all the glorious footage once again and have Shigsy tell us some more about the Nintendo DS, a device we cannot hear enough about!