Nothing planned for quiet Nintendo

You can expect a lot of things at this year’s E3, but don’t expect anything particularly revolutionary from Nintendo.

At least, that seems a fair assumption given Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has announced the company won’t be giving a big presentation.

“We decided not to host a large-scale presentation targeted at everyone in the international audience where we announce new information as we did in the past,” said Iwata.

“Instead, at the E3 show this year, we are planning to host a few smaller events that are specifically focused on our software lineup for the U.S. market.

"There will be one closed event for American distributors, and we will hold another closed hands-on experience even, for mainly the Western gaming media.”

He gave several reasons for the decision, including a desire to spread various pieces of information to people who would find it relevant – for example, not giving gamers themselves twenty minutes of sales figures they have no interest in, but instead saving those for industry analysts and distributors.

In the same announcement it became clear there would be no new hardware from Nintendo this year.

“We are not planning to launch new hardware, and our main activity at E3 will be to announce and have people experience our software...we will use E3 as an ideal opportunity to talk in detail mainly about the Wii U titles that we are going to launch this year.”

Deciding not to hold a conference is dividing analysts, some claiming it is a smart move others deploring what could be seen as a lost chance to heavily promote the Wii U and DS.

As for the new software mentioned in the announcement, most likely this will consist of new entries to the Super Smash Bros., Super Mario and Mario Kart franchises as these titles are already expected to appear at E3 in some fashion.

What do you make of Nintendo’s E3 plans? Let us know below