Terrible decision and no amount of damage control can defend it.
E3 is the biggest time of year where all the media from all spectrums come to see what is new. E3 get's covered from TV stations like MTV all the way down to local news stories. National media outlets pick it up and run stories.
Hiding away from that and saying it is better to give secretive interviews to the games media is like saying football teams would sell more shirts if the games were not shown. Which is rubbish.
These directs get almost zero exposure beyond the gaming websites. To think casuals will know about them is laughable. The only reason Nintendo are not going to have a conference is because they know the other two have a lot of things to show. It would appear that Nintendo doesn't have as much to show.
When the conferences come around a lot of Nintendo casual fans will wonder why they are not there, why they are not getting mentioned in the media. I can't help but think this will be far more negative then any bad conference they put on.
Stupid decision at a time when the Wii U really needs as much exposure as it can get.
