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Nintendo has taken a pass on this year’s E3 press conferences.
Though the publisher has been a mainstay of the trade show for years and last year showed its Wii U console during the Tuesday press conferences, Nintendo has decided to change tactics for this year’s event.
"First, we 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," Nintendo president Satoru Iwata told investors in a Q&A session last night.
"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. 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."
The new strategy seems to be about drumming up support for the Wii U’s software lineup, and Iwata thinks this requires a more personal touch than the massive press conferences afford.
"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," explained Iwata.
The new approach is a reaction to lessons learned from the Nintendo Direct service.
"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," said Iwata.
"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."
