Nintendo Will Not Be Having Its Big E3 Conference

As long as I can remember, one of the highlights of E3 was “the big three.” It’s always been a staple of the event, where Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have huge press conferences to discuss their upcoming plans. It appears that in 2013, we will only have “the big two” since Nintendo just announced they will not be participating.

Instead they plan to take a different approach this year, which involves doing smaller but more focused events. They even cited Nintendo Direct as a reason, since its been quite popular. Direct is their live stream where they’ve been announcing games, DLC & more.

“We [have] decided not to host a large-scale presentation targeted at everyone in the international audience where we announce new information as we did in the past. Instead, at the E3 show this year, we are planning to host a few smaller events that are specifically focused on our software lineup for the U.S. market”

This was a statement given by Satoru Iwata, Nintendo’s president and CEO. How said information will find its way to fans at home has yet to be determined. Although, Japan is getting their own Nintendo Direct stream during E3, so perhaps something similar will occur in NA.

Having given this more thought though, it kind of makes sense. With Microsoft and Sony having huge plans this year at E3, revealing even more on their upcoming consoles, Nintendo was fighting a losing battle. No matter what they could pull off, most people would have viewed them as 3rd place in terms of announcements. Still it’s very strange to not have the big three conferences. Nintendo has given us some very GIF worthy moments in the past, and it’ll be sad that we’re maybe missing out on that this year.

You can find the complete Nintendo statement on the matter below:

“In the past we invited reporters, investors and analysts, industry partners, such as software publishers, and distributors who attended E3 to our large-scale presentations. We also used them as a communication tool in which we broadcast our presentations on the Internet to reach out to video game fans around the globe. I believe that many are expecting us to host a similar event this year. On the other hand, since we set out on new endeavors such as Nintendo Direct two years ago in October, we have been paying special attention to the fact that different people demand different types of information from us.

For example, as video game fans are looking for information about games, it seems that they are less interested in sales figures that investors and analysts on the other hand attach much greater importance to, and distribution partners are looking for information on how we are going to market our products in the immediate future. At previous financial briefing sessions we announced information about our products, showed videos and even uploaded the recording of these events onto our website, but given that we now have an established method such as Nintendo Direct, we feel that we will be able to deliver our messages more appropriately and effectively by doing so individually based on the various needs of different groups of people.

At E3 this year, we are not planning to launch new hardware, and our main activity at E3 will be to announce and have people experience our software. Many people are certainly very interested in learning more about the Wii U titles that we are going to announce. 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. As a brand new challenge, we are working to establish a new presentation style for E3.”

Also, I did not speak at last year’s presentation, and I am not planning to speak at these events at the E3 show this year either. Apart from these exclusive events for visitors, we are continuing to investigate ways to deliver information about our games directly to our home audience around the time of E3. We will share more information about them once they have officially been decided. During the E3 period, we will utilize our direct communication tools, such as Nintendo Direct, to deliver information to our Japanese audience, including those who are at this financial briefing, mainly focusing on the software that we are going to launch in Japan, and we will take the same approach outside Japan for the overseas fans as well.”