Reactions to Nintendo's E3 "not that unfavorable" - Iwata

Nintendo's E3 showing this year came under criticism from fans and pundits alike. You can add investors to that list as well, as executives were grilled about the topic at the company's 75th annual general meeting of shareholders last week. According to Nintendo's English translation of the event, one shareholder questioned Nintendo's decision to announce only a handful of new titles considering gamers base their console purchasing decisions in part on the future lineup.

Having attended the show in person, Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto said the company made a deliberate strategy of focusing on products launching soon in the US.

"Since we mainly included the software that would be released before the end of this year, the entire software lineup appeared to be small," Miyamoto said. "And because we did not include a number of third-party titles, we must've ended up giving people the impression that not so many titles will be released on our platforms in future. As for future titles, since we only introduced the software to be sold early next year, we acknowledge the criticism from our fans that we failed to excite them with new proposals. On the other hand, when we looked at our booth at E3 this year, I had a solid feeling that our trade customers appreciated the very fact that they were able to play the software which soon would be released into the market and that many of them were Nintendo-like software titles."

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata did not attend E3, but backed up Miyamoto's assessment of the booth experience regardless.

"One thing I should say about Nintendo's E3 booth is that, unlike the other booths in general, most of the visitors to our booth were smiling and actually picking up the controllers and playing with our games," Iwata said. "So, this was one big difference because a number of the visitors to other booths appeared to have spent a lot of time just watching game videos."

Even so, he acknowledged that beyond the confines of the E3 show floor, public sentiment about Nintendo's E3 show was not overwhelmingly positive.

'We recognize that we have let down a number of the online viewers of this year's E3, especially the avid Nintendo fans, because we did not show what they had expected," Iwata said. "On the other hand, since E3 was originally a US trade show, when we consider what kind of messages we should dispatch and in what fashion, while we have to take into consideration the impression that we may give to people outside the US, we have been very mindful about how we can maximize our immediate business in the US this year."

He later added, "So, we listen sincerely to the voices of fans who were not happy about the announcements we made in the online Digital Event, and we will have to make further efforts to improve. But when it comes to the reactions to our E3 activities overall, the reactions from trade customers and the media were not that unfavorable. I hope you will understand it."