Nintendo rather prominently bowed out of the Press Conference battle to focus their efforts on a Nintendo Direct. I, for one, thought it would be a weaker presentation, but I decided to give it a chance.

Today, with their Direct over, I have to say I think the Press Conference still has a serious advantage.

For one, I understand that virtually everyone had serious lag issues; that's never been a problem with the press conferences, at least recently.

For another, the lack of an audience sounding-board was really apparent here. There was a marked lack of energy in this that has always been a part of Nintendo conferences, even in recent years.

The last is that there was no personality. No Reggie on stage to get the crowd worked up, no Miyamoto to inject some personality. It was very cold and impersonal.

What do you think? Would this have been better as a Press Conference, or were there advantages to the Direct?

A press conference can still have streaming issues, though there would still be live blogs to help. :/

It was horrible. That guy presenting had zero charisma.

When you present games through a proper conference it just gets more exciting.

My thought is that the conference would have been longer. Really felt like they rushed through a lot of stuff. But then again there's nothing confining the length of Directs, so that was their prerogative.

i liked iwata and his apology bow

To be honest i think its better. We dont have to suffer through investor banther and its all about the games.

I prefer the Directs.

No time lost telling jokes with the hope of making the crowd laugh (something that doesn't always happen), no time lost waiting for the "x" team member or developer comes to stage to talk about how good it is to be there before showing a, with luck, 3' glimpse of its game, no people clapping for everything (it's embarrassing), etc.

Can the Directs be improved? Sure, but they are still better than a conference.

The Direct worked for what they were going for. A video full of gameplay out lining what we should be looking forward to.

A Conference would be the Direct except bloated with stage entries and more blah, blah, blah. The only thing I miss from Conferences are that they are broadcasted on TV (sometimes), the crowd cheer, and Reggie.

It is pretty obvious they did the direct because they did not have much to offer for E3 compared to the other platforms- even if you discount the fact Sony and MSFT released new consoles this E3, they still blew Ninty away in terms of games-

if anything Ninty only presented bad news- most of the games had been announced already- the bad news was the timing- too many of the "big guns" are not showing up until 2014 (at least that is what they said- could even be later) Its kind of hard for me to get excited or tell my 7 year old (its his Wii U), only a year and a half to go!! At least last years launch games are coming soon!!! I should have waited till Summer 2013 to buy the Wii U for him ...if it has not been discontinued by then

Really it is about the same, the only people that get anything out of a press conference are the media, we learned about the same games we would have if they held a conference. Maybe not as much hype but really, since Nintendo really didn't unleash anything that unexpected save Donkey Kong and a few eShop titles, I think there is no doubt they made the right decision.

Really what would the conference have been about besides tooting their own horn or saying the exact same stuff they said in the Nintendo Direct?