For a while now- ever since 2013- Nintendo has switched to doing video livestreams at E3 to substitute for their traditional press conferences. While the “Direct” format didn’t do too well at E3 at first, over time, Nintendo has honed and perfected it, and it’s arguably superior to live press keynotes by the company.
Still, there are many who miss the spectacle and hype of the big live stage shows, and wish Nintendo would return to doing them. For those people, there may yet still be hope- it seems like Nintendo is open to going for a live conference format in the future at E3.
“We decide each year what to show in the booth based on the content we have. We also do the same when it comes to what we want to do in Nintendo Direct or a presentation,”saidsenior director of corporate communications at Nintendo of America Charlie Scibetta in an interview with GamesBeat. “In the past, we’ve done presentations where we brought thousands of people together and demoed live on stage. With the last four or five years, we’ve done more of the video approach. It’s really whatever we think is the best way to bring those games to life.
“We think that Nintendo Direct recently has been a nice way to do it because we’re able to package interviews and gameplay and fine-tune it, so it’s a nice tight presentation. It’s an efficient use of time. It’s a good way to bring these games to life in a video format. In the future, we might go back to a presentation. We might stick with video. We might do something completely different. But it’ll all be based on what we have to show that year.”
So there you have it- that’s what it comes down to now. Nintendo is open to doing live conferences when it deems that those might be the best way to showcase its games. To be fair to Nintendo, the company has adopted the live conference format for several of its showings- for instance, the Nintendo Switch presentation last year was a live conference. It’s just hard to argue with their approach sculpted around individual games, when that has gotten us things such as the memorable blowout for Breath of the Wild that we got at E3.