exactly, it just gets people more excited and hyped to do a live show. and at the end of the day E3 is all about marketing for these publishers, nintendo are just being counter productive with these directs. 

i was gonna use a sports example to in my post above. lol. 

You can always fix perceptions if you have good fundamentals. If Nintendo makes a good show this year (which is more to do with not making suckish trailers that portray their games as duller than they actually are), then it's easy to go out and pound the pavement with the journos and the gamers to get them to change their opinions. Perceptions are not to be discounted, but they do not dictate reality.

haters gon' hate

in the end what matters is that people just pay attention/notice

because Nintendo games are generally pretty awesome, you just have to know they're awesome

how they get that across is up to them, I personally think having a normal press conference would help just to attract normal attention, but as long as they put effort into what they do to get attention otherwise, it's not the end of the world, but far from it: they could still easily blast the other systems apart with a solid selection of games, a potential new version of the 3DS handheld, etc.

this.

I mean it's a bit different but really just for the press. If you want the press to get excited and write glowing praise, you need to get them in a room, hype them up, and possibly give them some swag.

To the audience, the difference is minimal BUT they did it horribly last year. By calling it an E3 Direct and making it so similar to their other directs, the event didn't really feel as special as it should have. That being said, playing the E3 demos last year was more awesome than any conference, but not everyone could experience that.

Nintendo has to make this one feel a bit more special. Choose a more exciting backdrop, Try to arrange different presenters (hopefully some third party ones) and so on. A celebrity or two maybe (someone like Robin Williams who genuinely likes their games). I'm not great at presentations, but you get the idea.

Calling it a "digital event" instead of a direct is a good start. Hopefully they'll do a good job of making it feel like a big deal.

Live conferences build momentum and excitement from the people that attend them. Whereas web cast conferences are simply promotional videos.

Its like a music concert. Seeing a music concert is a totally different experience then just listening to music or watching music videos.

I would rather have and see a live music concert then listen to the CD or watch a bunch of music videos.

Although conferences are scripted they also get ad lib moments. And seeing the live software running (although it can crash) shows that it is real in some way. Whereas non-live events are completely scripted, and who knows what the real state of the software is...

It's not a live conference if it's pre-recorded. I like live conferences much better, but at this point right now Nintendo has to focus on release their damn games... and show the world why they need a Wii U.

Yea, I was going to post this aswell, a pre-recorded video is very different to a live presentation in front of hundreds to thousends of journalists (and tens to hundreds of thousends of live-viewers).

It's much harder to pull off a live prentation flawlessly and hence it imho gives a more honest impression -  while pre-recorded material has been overpromising before, the first Kinect videos for example come to mind.

What am I missing?

Live > Recorded. There is more potential for screw ups but it just feels more alive and you get a quick check of people's reaction. Are they amazed? are they dissapointed? Are they indifferent?