How The Death Of E3 Changes Gaming Forever
6. Nintendo Ditching The Conference Stage
Nintendo was arguably the start of E3's problems, long before Sony's withdrawal. Having been a major player at E3 since it began, 2012 was their last conference within the Expo and each year since has seen them move to online, pre-recorded broadcasts instead for their main announcements.
Presented as an E3 edition of their “Nintendo Direct” format, where the company provides updates for their upcoming plans, it was first adopted in 2011 by Nintendo under Satoru Iwata and soon extended this to E3.
It gave Nintendo a level of presentation freedom not possible within the LA Convention Centre, and this approach became widely adopted by other companies ever since, including Sony with their “State of Play” broadcasts.
Despite this, Nintendo continue to maintain a floor presence, providing demos of upcoming games and broadcasting their “Treehouse Live” events from the show floor to offer a more in-depth look at their new titles for online viewers.
They may not have left E3 in full, but the impact of their approach laid out the foundations for what followed in recent years.