E3 is just mere hours away from officially beginning, and the amount of unknown surprises and circumstances awaiting the gaming community is certainly raising plenty of tension and excitement. The most unknown of the major three consoles comes from Nintendo, who will be showing off their all-new Wii U in full detail, along with the launch line-up, what more the console has to offer, and plenty of unclear announcements. Yesterday, in a pre-E3 press conference briefing, not only can we expect a brand new controller to come with the Wii U but some very interesting functionalities and possibly a new Super Mario Brothers.

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata unveiled just a tip of the Wii U iceberg that will be coming Tuesday morning. For starters, it seems the motion controllers will be joined by another all-new piece of hardware as Iwata unveiled the Wii U Pro Controller. While it very much resmebles an Xbox controller, along with the player LEDs of the Playstation controller, it still seems very much like a big relief to have a normal handheld controller such as this back on a Nintendo console. As someone who played some Wii games with a Gamecube controller (I’m looking at you Super Smash Brothers Brawl), it’s nice to get back to the familiar once more.

Meanwhile, Iwata also revealed the latest version of the Wii U Gamepad. The Gamepad will had not only an NFC Reader/Writer as the console itself but also interestingly enough a TV button in order to switch back and forth between the screen on the pad itself and your television. For those of you who don’t know, the NFC Reader/Writer is the technology that will allow you to place an item on the surface of the screen, the pad will read it, and the object will bring forth an in-game result to the item. Ubisoft showcased this in their first trailer for their upcoming title Rayman Legends, and it’ll be on full display in just a couple days (with hopefully a few additional games and effects to follow). The controller still contains the front facing camera for video messaging and more, while the pad’s new details will likely go into thorough explanation during Tuesday’s conference.

Finally, the last big piece of information that Nintendo revealed happened to be the software they’re calling the “Miiverse”. Acting as a sort of headquarters for you and all of your Mii characters, the Miiverse will basically seek to do away with the whole friend code aspect and bring everyone together in one environment. You’ll be able to see what games your friends are playing, and the software will even have cross connectivity as well with you being able to access the Miiverse from your Nintendo 3DS, your computer, or your cell phone all thanks to the Nintendo Network.