it sounds like nintendo is rolling over and playing dead at e3. either that or they really have nothing to show that we already dont know about and its not worth the money for e3 for 5 or so nintendo games.

A Nintendo Direct attracts 1 million viewers. The record, in October at least (probably continued to grow even), is for the Animal Crossing Direct with over 1.1m viewers. These things are wildly successful. YouTube is not the main distribution channel.

This makes me believe they will have a decent sized Direct a few daya before e3 where they show some footage and announce new games, then e3 is all about playable games

Honestly I think 'casuals' only pay attention to tv-advertisements. They don't read the 'gaming' section in magazines or the newspaper.

I'm sure they'll have a nintendo direct before e3 starts where they reveal most of the games. But still it won't be the same level of excitement...

They do. Reviews/previews sections are quite popular, and if the news is big enough it will get an advert on the front page. Theyre usually bundled in with movies or music, but E3 tends to get a fairly decent push.

I remember Wonderbook being quite big with British media last year.

Also, radio.

So they´re going to make several smaller conferences instead of just one big conference.

That´s fine. What´s the big deal about it ? Just because they changed they way they´re showing their products to the media doesn´t mean anything but that.

People assume too much over small things.

Exactly; one of the reason why I watch is to share it with so many others at the same time...

Considering the huge audiences Nintendo Directs are getting, probably they´re doing that because they want to focus more on the consumer and less on the media, who is always screwing them.

After the initial disappointment, there are some things that give me some hope.

1-If we look back at Nintendo's E3 from last year, their conference was bad, but the Nintendo Direct that they had 2 days earlier (the one with Iwata and his bananas) was very good. If his words mean that instead of a live conference we'll get a 1h long, recorded, well edited, Nintendo Direct all about WiiU games then bring it on!

2-Iwata mentions "We will use the timing of E3 to focus on providing details about our Wii U titles for release this year" so it will be moslty about WiiU, WiiU games. The 3DS is big enough to grab attention by itself.

3-He also mentions that it won't be directed towards the whole world but focused for Americans. They also have their usual show pre-TGS to focus on Japan, so that means that... Maybe they'll have a show in this years GDC in Europe! And that will be great for us, europeans.

4-“will attempt to use this year’s E3 to make announcements in a new way that we have not tried before.” I wonder if that means that instead of Ubisoft (to name one) being on Nintendo's E3 conference, Nintendo will be at Ubi's conference to talk about an exclusive or something like that.