When Nintendo announced last week that Zelda will be the only playable game at this year’s E3, they left the door open for a press conference or Direct where they could announce other non-playable games. Seems like that ain’t happening, either.
On Tuesday, June 14, rather than hold some sort of blowout event full of interesting news and trailers, Nintendo will live-stream the new Zelda. Said the company in a press release this morning:
Nintendo’s kickoff to the E3 show happens at 9 a.m. PT Tuesday, June 14, when Nintendo of America President and COO Reggie Fils-Aime introduces Nintendo Treehouse: Live, which will be dedicated to a day of live-streamed gameplay of The Legend of Zelda. This will be the world’s first in-depth look at the game, which will also include commentaries by Nintendo developers. The Legend of Zelda gameplay will be streamed from the E3 show floor via Nintendo’s channels on YouTube and Twitch, as well as on http://e3.nintendo.com. The stream will include game coverage, behind-the-scenes info and plenty of fun.
Nintendo has always held that Tuesday morning slot, first for live press conferences and then, more recently, for pre-recorded Nintendo Direct presentations that were always full of new reveals and surprises. This year, for the first time I can remember, they’re skipping that.
While it’s possible they might do some surprise event just before E3 or even later this year — and I’m sure the new Zelda will be cool — it’s yet another bummer for Nintendo fans in a year that’s been full of them.
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13 responses to “Nintendo Is Using Their E3 Press Conference Slot For A Zelda Event”
I get the feeling that Zelda at E3 will be a freakin’ enormous game. We already know it is open world and some people even postulated at the size of the map IIRC. My hunch is that it will be a kind of Skyrim: Zelda Edition. There’ll be many lengthy side quests in addition to an open world with activities and ‘events’ in the same vein as Sleeping Dogs. I think this is the only reason that Nintendo would devote an entire E3 to the game.
That being said, I think that Nintendo is only going to be at E3 because it needs to maintain some mindshare. If not for that, it would skip it and reveal the NX around TGS time (not that they will be at TGS itself in all probability). They’ve already said that the concept for NX is pretty unique, so I don’t think they’d want to give competitors more than 6 months or so lead time to steal ideas if the thing turns into a second Wii.
The other reason I think the NX will be revealed around TGS time is that after the failure of the Wii U and the decline of the 3DS Nintendo will really want to secure its home market. Being a very conservative company, it cannot afford not to design the NX and reveal the NX with a Japanese market firmly in mind. Yes it will be a global launch, but I think you’ll find a lot of attention given to Japanese developers like Capcom and Level 5. Nintendo needs to keep titles like Monster Hunter and Youkai Watch exclusive because it cannot count on the likes of EA and Activision to support the NX strongly after two generations in the wilderness.
One more reason that March 2017 and Japan will be the focus is because around end of March and into April Japanese taxpayers get their refunds. Aren’t hardware sales traditionally higher in Japan around that time?
Maybe this is all wrong, but I get the feeling Nintendo is going to play it safe until it goes really deep and hard for the Japanese market with NX. We’ll just have to wait and see…
Pretty sure nintendo said they’re releasing unnanounced 3ds games to release this year, surely they’ll be at e3?
Who knows.
He just won’t stop with the editorialising.
Haven’t trusted Level 5 since they burned everyone out side of japan by not releasing the final part of WKC2,the DLC that pretty much closes the story and the fact that it came with the japanese version via second disk just proves just how much they value the westen audiences kinda sad coming from the people that made Dark Cloud
Has Nintendo ever done any major announcements at e3 that that hadn’t done leading up to or during a direct?
I really don’t think E3 is a thing for them.
So still no news at all on Pokémon Sun/Moon? Please don’t tell me they’re delayed for NX too…
It might just be bias towards bigger news items in journalism but I’m kind of getting the feeling that Nintendo NX and the new Zelda are the only things Nintendo have left to try and keep themselves afloat. There just doesn’t seem to be anything else being pushed as hard.
The 3DS is the most successful non-PC gaming platform of this generation.
3DS has done really well. Miitomo now has 10 million users. They are finally giving indies some decent support and it’s starting to pay off. The next Pokemon generation is coming late this year or early next. Monster Hunter is still selling like crazy. Youkai Watch is selling like Pokemon used to. Their new console is some kind of siren song for speculation articles.
They’re doing fine.
There is something super suspicious about all this. Seriously think the NX announcement and release is the kind of thing they want to blow everyone out of the water with, so they’re keeping everything not already known close to their chest. Makes sense, I mean they have to move on from the Wii U some time.
Is that picture up the top an official piece of Nintendo advertising?
I mean, are they advertising the event using the a screenshot from 15 seconds of gameplay 2+ years ago?!
I understand keeping your cards close to your chest, but surely the game has changed enough (even with a change of platform!) in the past two years that they wouldn’t want to be showing it as it was anymore…. Surely whatever they’ve been doing in the last 2 years has made the concept stuff a bit redundant by now.
You’d think it would either be a new screenshot or just a logo or some other piece of concept art (like the new picture of link that was shown at the NX announcement).
Why would you think that? The big reveal is going to be at E3, that’s when we expect something new.
Because after 2 years of work and a change of hardware that old screenshot should no longer be a positive representation of the current build.
To mix metaphors you can play your cards close but you should still put a good foot forward. Surely someone who’s been working on that field for a few hundred hours now looks at that screenshot and goes “wow, that looks like sh*t now”? Why go out of your way to republish a screenshot that’s not representative of your product?
New screenshot makes more sense. If you don’t want to show that then concept art is also a good idea.
A two year old screenshot is a bit weird. Have a look at marketing for other games, it is unusual.