| maverick40 said: It doesn't inspire confidence in what they have to show to be honest. |
That's debatable. There are two possibilities...
1. They don't have solid stuff to show in a proper press conference, so to avoid underwhelming people, they're going with a Direct, where they can more easily just show trailers, etc, to fill the time.
2. They have such a strong lineup that a press conference is unnecessary, they feel that the Direct reveals will drive hype so strongly that a press conference would just be overkill.
Basically, either they don't think what they have to show is sufficient for a press conference, or they are concerned that a press conference is an unnecessary expense for what they have to show. Personally, I'm hoping for the latter. And I strongly suspect that they have some big stuff to announce.
Why? Well, let's look at what we know of Nintendo's mid-2014 to mid-2015 lineup for 3DS: Fossil Fighters: Infinite Gear and a Pikachu-based detective game. Then you look at their Wii U lineup, and we have Smash Bros Wii U, X, and Yarn Yoshi (note: I'm not counting the crossover titles that are being developed by third parties - Bayonetta 2 by Platinum, Hyrule Warriors by Tecmo Koei, and SMTxFE by Atlus).
That's five titles. Six, if you add the new Zelda title that is likely to drop late 2015. That's the total of what we know of, that is coming to the Nintendo systems but isn't out yet.
Now consider the franchises that Nintendo typically has released a title on each system, but haven't yet on Wii U: Metroid, Mario Party, Paper Mario, Pokemon, Kirby, Fire Emblem, and Animal Crossing are some of the more notable ones. And there's a rumour of a new Mario Galaxy type game. And there's also the Miyamoto new IP. There's Kid Icarus, F-Zero, Star Fox, 1080, Wave Race, Battalion Wars, Excite, Endless Ocean, and Pilotwings, to name a few, that also have a chance to show up.
At this time last year, we knew of Game & Wario, Pikmin 3, Wonderful 101, Wii Fit U, Bayonetta 2, Wind Waker HD, Smash Bros 4, Yarn Yoshi, Mario Kart, X, and SMTxFE. Nintendo's only early reveal so far this year is Hyrule Warriors - the rest of the games we know about were revealed last year. And yet, as the list I just provided above demonstrates, there are so many titles we can expect from Nintendo, that haven't been announced.
There's one other curio. Nintendo allowed Sonic Boom to be revealed early. Why? Revealed at that time, it wasn't going to drive any additional sales. And if they were lacking in content, holding back the reveal of a guaranteed third-party exclusive for E3 would have been an obvious choice. And yet, they revealed it early.
I'm not going to call it a certainty, but I see good reason to have hope that Nintendo's decisions for this E3 are due to the strength of their lineup, rather than the weakness of it.
