Seriously? Seriously? Who are you trying to fool? 

On the thread subject: I've been thinking about it and I can't come up with a solid reason. Maybe the levels of support the Wii U is getting is a part of the decision..but then I still think the traditional conference would be beneficial to Wii U, even if they don't have many third party games to show.

Considering they practically abandoned the Wii as soon as 2010 was over, letting it die prematurely, it might not have been a very good idea to include the name 'Wii' for the successor..on the other hand, pretty tempting to include it, given the success of the system.

That Nokia Theater is not cheap to rent. Nintendo also used to rent the stage by the Graumann's Theater, which is where the Oscars are held ... that's not cheap either.

I think they just figure if we're just speaking to Nintendo fans, then why not just do so through Nintendo Direct. You can shoot a Nintendo Direct with Iwata in the basement of the Nintendo HQ, lol, for like no cost and splice in game footage and voila. Nintendo fans get what they want (to see the new Mario + Mario Kart + Smash + Wind Waker HD) and Nintendo gets their message across to the same audience for a fraction of the cost.

Seems like a pretty Nintendo way of thinking about things.

A third party megaton or some kind of new blue ocean fad that Nintendo is trying to push would justify having a big stage show because in that case you want to get the message out to non-Nintendo fans. But if you don't have any of that, then what's the point? All the Mario in the world isn't going to change the mind of the kid who's set on buying the new 720/PS4 and plays games like Halo/GTA/Madden/COD almost exclusively. Nintendo's already lost this audience, no point in trying to chase them and spend money on that crowd.

Holy shit, Nintendo is skipping E3? LOL. Good idea, give MS and Sony all the spotlight for E3.

Edit: NVM They're still there. Would have been LOL bad though. Thank Zeus. 

The only reason the Wii U lacks major 3rd party support is because Nintendo is still being Nintendo. They've literally been doing the same thing over and over again hoping to catch lighting in a bottle. It worked for the Wii and it didn't for the Wii U.

The main problem with all Nintendo systems since the N64 is lack of 3rd party support. What has Nintendo done to fix this? Quoting Adam Sessler, Nintendo is still living in their own bubble.

That's the thing, I don't think they'd just be speaking to Nintendo fans, which is crucial to why the big conference is so important. They'll always be able to communicate to Nintendo fans but E3 is the best way of getting your company message (and games) out to people that may not normally pay attention, which is just what they need.

It's a question of whether the cost of the big conference over NDirects is acceptable, proportional to the extra exposure they'd gain by holding it. I think it is. They'll no doubt be paying a lot for the floor space and backroom space that they've reserved anyway..they shouldn't skimp out on the conference either. 

Yeah but I think even Nintendo knows that no matter how good Mario Kart is its not going to make the PS4/720 dudebros crowd go "WOW! I'm cancelling my PS4/720 pre-order right away!". At best I think they know their chance there is that maybe they can convince this audience to buy a Wii U as a secondary console for the 3-4 big Nintendo games that do come out for each of the first 4 years or so.

To "wow" the Playstation/XBox crowd, they would need a lot of help from third parties, and third parties simply aren't willing to help out Nintendo all that much. Not that it's a sour relationship, but they certainly aren't best buds either, it's like you don't call a "kinda friend" to come pick you up at 3 AM when your car is broken down. That's like Ubi Soft left Nintendo out to dry when they badly needed Wii U content with Rayman.

I think this E3 decision is just another sign of acknowledgement from Nintendo. They can't win with the PS/XBox crowd, so there's no point in expending a ton of resources needlessly (like booking the giant Nokia Theater) to do so. Nintendo fans can be easily served with the Nintendo Direct format for a fraction of the cost.

So they save a little money, and give everyone the message that even they don't think they can compete? Why is their audience for this Nintendo fans only anyway? They should have been planning for this E3 for a very long time, but this feels like another tick in the "Nintendo doesn't have a clue what they are doing with the Wii U" column. Surely they want the largest audience possible to know about and want the Wii U.

I think your interpretation is too negative..they haven't let lack of third party support stop them before (and wasn't the 'secondary console' thing something Iwata mentioned was contributing to sales of the Wii? That didn't stop them either.) The best way to get that support is to sell your system, which I believe the conference is the best way of doing. No doubt that the next PS and XBox will dominate the show but looking at their game lineup they have to unveil, it'll automatically be better than the last two E3s for the Wii U...and I DO think they'd attract the PS/Xbox crowd with those games, to some degree. 

This is some serious speculation though, as we don't know how much or really how many of these games Nintendo will unveil, and we're still missing so much info about the PS/XBox lineup and featureset. 

I think we'll agree to disagree on this one. I just can't believe they've given up on the conference for the reasons you say. 

Nintendo backed out because they're currently in WTF mode and don't really know what do to as far as their direction. That's my opinion anyway.