Nintendo Outlines E3 Plans – Smash Tournament and No Conference

Nintendo has detailed their E3 plans for this year, and like last year, they don’t include a live press conference.

In the ridiculously zany video you can see above, the company partnered with Mega64 to show off their plans for the show, which includes a live Smash Bros. tournament at the Nokia Theatre with 16 of the most skilled Smash players . In addition, Best Buy stores around the country will host Smash Bros. tournaments of their own as a way to let the general public demo the upcoming game.

Rather than hosting a traditional press conference, Nintendo will expand upon their Direct concept with the Nintendo Digital Event, “a new kind of video program that will reveal and provide further detail about the gaming experiences on the way for Nintendo platforms in 2014 and beyond.” The Digital Event will air on Tuesday, June 10 at 9 a.m. Pacific time.

Finally, Nintendo will offer live-streaming by the Nintendo Treehouse from the show floor throughout the whole week, offering live and unscripted demos of all the games from the Nintendo booth.

Nintendo’s decision to forgo an E3 conference last year was generally met with criticism, and the technical difficulties, brevity, and lack of demos in the stream were issues that solidified their weak performance at last year’s show. With the Wii U still floundering a year and half after release it’s disappointing to see them lose the hype and public reaction that a press conference provides, especially with a new Zelda almost guaranteed to be shown. That said, if the company expands upon the traditional Direct format and fixes the issues that plagued last year’s Direct, this year’s show could prove to be a much better one for Nintendo.

Source: Nintendo