And no, I'm saying that because I liked the conference. I was bored to tears to be honest lol. When I mean unrealistic expecations, I mean when people see games at the press conference, they expect it to release either at launch, or only 2 or 3 monthes away. Lets look at the 3DS shall we? The 2010 conference was amazing, it showed the 3DS off great, Kid Icurus, residecent Evil, Metal Gear solid, Zelda Ocarina of Time 3d, Animal Crossing, Mario Kart, Paper Mario, ect... It was great! people were giving nintendo praise! it was a wonderful time...for about 5 monthes. When Janauary hit, and nintendo showed off the real launch lineup, People were confused and angry(similiar to recent e3 reaction). they were saying "How could nintendo show off all these great titles and not bring a single one of them to launch!" They called nintedo liars, insulted its launch like no tommorow, all the negative feedback like "nintendo's got no games lol", ect... Instead of having hate at the E3 conference, they got hate at launch.. MUCH worse.

And when they showed the games at E3 2011 again, people wernt as impressed. They saw a lot of them already so the games didn't give that "WOW" effect anymore. So it gave them a "well, its pretty showing for the 3DS, not great though".

What nintendo's plan is that they don't want to showcase their first party titles. They know it would get the fanboys and gaming press freaking out like mad, they know it would get a positive reaction. But they are thinking ahead, because those same people praising them for their great showing, are gonna insult them when they show a launch lineup that does not include those games. And when they finally do showcase those amazing first party titles at e3 2013, they will go crazy and give nintendo positive feedback once again. Just imagine the reaction if nintendo shows A Metroid, a 3d Mario, the retro title, Super Smash Brothers, and a Mario Kart at E3 2013 with all those titles having a 2013 holiday release date and early 2014 release date. It'll be a E3 for the ages

just my take on it

Chances are that E3 2013 will show those games, but I'm thinking Nintendo is more inclined to reveal new software and the like during it's Nintendo Direct. In all honesty, Nintendo could have shown one title upcoming in 2013/2014, but really no reason to if it isn't coming out for quite awhile. I think most people were just disappointed that they had a Zelda tech demo in 2011 E3, but nothing was shown for this one.

In the coming weeks/months, I'm sure we'll get some nice software reveals, so it will be interesting to see.

Nah,I just think none of thier teams really have anything concrete enough to show a trailer or demo.Sakurai just started on smash bros,Intelligent systems is busy with 3ds,Many of ead is busy with the 3ds,nintendoland,pikmin,nsmbu.

Only hal,retro,and monolith are doing something and I am guessing nintendo dont want to announce big titles so soon so people still buy some other lesser known stuff like pikmin.Plus usually most of nintendo's core franchises come to the system in year 2.Wind waker and mario came in 2002 a year after gcn launch and smash bros,mario galaxy and mario kart came in 2007 a year after wii's launch...but smash was delayed for march of 2008...still pissed about that

@OP I totally agree with all what you said but I don't think they will be waiting
a whole year for the next E3 reveal of titles rather they will be doing the
Nintendo way of announcing new titles through Nintendo Direct and
other special events which has been successful so far and I won't be
surprise when other competitors follow this method.

It's difficult when there's nothing you can hold on until E3 2013 or equivalent, I'd rather know what to expect in future. If they won't show anything now, I won't be interested in buying their hardware and chances are many will do the same. As a result third parties will be scared away because of low interest in the hardware and even less games will be made...and so Vicious Circle closes.

Besides...well, might not be a good idea to throw this in here, but sometimes I wished that those E3 conferences would be like Apple Developer conferences.

Video games: See these shiny new games? You can buy and play them in 5 months, assuming no delays happen.
Apple: See this shiny new hardware with ultra high resolution screen? You can buy it right now.

I don't think this is the case and I hope it was nintendo's reasoning for the poor E3 showing.

Firstly, the 3DS had a bad launch so this was the sole reason for the negative press. It didn't stem from the fact they had showed off games which weren't made available day 1 (zelda, mario kart, kid icarus, RE, etc) but from the fact that nobody wanted the games that were available day 1, theres a difference. If Nintendo had only showed the 3DS launch titles, they would have been in worse position no doubt and would have received negativity both at E3 and launch.

At the launch of a system you always need to give a taste of whats to come, regardless of how hard a company tries your never gonna appeal to everyone at launch but you can reassure them the console is worth investing. Most of the people who bought the 3DS in the early months probably didn't but it for the launch titles (SF4, Nintendogs, Pilotwings) but for the games they knew were coming out.

Why Nintendo didn't show more 1st parties I'm not entirely sure, but I do know zelda and super smash bros may still be in planning stages, possibly the same with 3D mario if the team only finished working on 3DS game 6 months ago. But Nintendo has a ton of 1st/2nd party studio's, they should try and Utilise them as well as sony utilises their studios.

I think they probably didn't show them because they simply weren't ready to be shown.

But they may have shown all the family mass-appeal shit to appeal to investors and get them behind the Wii U, a Wii sports successor is more appealing to investors than the next Zelda.

I'm still waiting for the big, bloody, cinematic, social boundary pushing, apocalyptic, and blockbusting Nintendo first party made equivalent of "God of War", "Gears of War", "Uncharted", or "The Last of Us" to be revealed before I invest in another Nintendo console.