The more I think about it, the more the radical change in Nintendo's E3 presence from 2006 (swagger) and 2008 (soccer mom) feels attributable to two factors:
- Nintendo being utterly gobsmacked by the success of their blue ocean strategy after years of floundering in the "core" market with the N64 and GameCube. ("Well, I guess this is our market now.")
- The massive shake-up in E3's structure. The supposed "fixes" nearly killed the event at the time; since, the ESA has seemingly found a more reasonable middle-ground between chaos and restraint.
2009 marked a turning point where Nintendo was dipping its toes back into the "core" end of the pool, followed by 2010 when they practically dove in. I'd like to think that, since the restructuring of the event and Nintendo's experiences with the "tides" of their blue ocean, we won't ever see another E3 showing as catastrophic as '08. Nintendo devotees are an extremely stable market and where their powerful word-of-mouth begins. If anything, they'll need to kick ass yet again at this E3 to launch the Wii U successfully, since they've lost a lot of mindshare on the console side of things.
If anything, I'm convinced that showing the Wii U early was part of their plan for this year. We aren't the only ones who have been stewing over the system in this time, and the hype is spilling over. If they can make good on it, even a little, this might be an E3 for the ages.
And hey, if they don't, at least it's an HD Nintendo console. Finally!