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Every year, the big three console manufacturers host competing press conferences before the show floor opens at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, each vying for the eyes (and words) of the attending press. This year will be different. Nintendo has revealed via a Financial Results Briefing that it will not be conducting a traditional E3 press conference. Instead, Nintendo president Saturo Iwata said that Nintendo is "planning to host a few smaller events that are specifically focused on our software lineup for the U.S. market. There will be one closed event for American distributors, and we will hold another closed hands-on experience event, for mainly the Western gaming media."
Iwata points to Nintendo Directs, which have successfully conveyed news regarding software releases to gamers, as a natural evolution of the press conference mindset. He explained that while gamers want to know about games and investors want to know about sales numbers, having one event where both are discussed really doesn't service either perfectly.
That's not to say that Nintendo will ignore the event, though--on the contrary, it sounds as though Nintendo will approach E3 with the same force it always has, just... differently. "We will use E3 as an ideal opportunity to talk in detail mainly about the Wii U titles that we are going to launch this year, and we also plan to make it possible for visitors to try the games immediately," he explained. "As a brand new challenge, we are working to establish a new presentation style for E3."
So, is it time to panic? Likely not. We already discussed what the briefing itself meant as we analyzed the numbers, but we'll have more tomorrow on what this interesting news means for Nintendo.
