E3 2014: Is Nintendo’s All Digital Event Format The Future?

INQ: Nintendo came to E3 2014 with the lowest of expectations between the three major console makers and then blew it up with an entertaining digital event focused on the Wii U instead of the traditional stage press conference. This led Forbes contributor Erik Kain to declare that the all digital strategy is the "future of E3." Is it though or did Nintendo just manage to hit all the right notes for the first time in a few years?

[fatneal]

yes...just think if smash wasnt coming out nintendo could have held a mario kart tournament and had the same level of success...

nintendo took notes on what worked and didnt work from last years non-e3 conference and it shows...what nintendo proved is that the media will go where you tell them too and i think you will see much more of that in the future from a lot of companies

[wonderfulmonkeyman]

I think a large part of why Nintendo succeeded so grandly this year is precisely because of the tournament at the Nokia Theater, and the Treehouse presentations that ran the entire length of E3 instead of just one day.

By doing that, they've single-handedly solved two issues that E3 has had in the past:

#1 The Treehouse presentations allowed them to spread out and deliver much more information than they would normally be able to deliver by relying upon a conference or Direct alone.

#2 The Press conferences used to allow the public, but now they only allow press and special guests.
As a consequence, the crowds are smaller and the reactions, similarly, feel less genuinely excited.[in some cases, it even feels like they were paid to clap]
The tournament at the Nokia Theater alleviates this short-coming by allowing press AND public to take part in all of the fun.
Over 2000 Smash fans and public gamers attended that event, and the highlights of it garnered proportionately louder and more excited reactions because of it, despite it being over just a single game rather than the announcements of a bunch of new ones.

It also helps that Nintendo was the one that showed the most gameplay throughout the entire three days.
They didn't just stick with CGI or cut-scenes; they went all-out to deliver gameplay moments to the fans that wanted to see how these games will flow when the action cranks up.

Overall, Nintendo did nearly everything right.
They could have used a longer main presentation and the reveals of a few more key titles[Metroid and the announcement of Gamecube VC titles would have been magnificent caps to an already spectacular performance], but the fact of the matter is that they took what we thought was going to be the same old fail as last year, and completely blew away the debbie-downer's expectations with lots and lots of what they do best:
Fun games.
Fun games EVERYWHERE.

[fatneal]

totally agree...its up to ninendo to keep the momentum going