Let me translate for you:
"We here at Nintendo still think E3 is a massive cost and that the returns from presenting at the show are dubious. Plus a lot of you guys tend to be giant, entitled jerks about the show. So we're going to continue to plow energy instead into our beloved cash cows instead, which provide rather consistent returns in exactly the way that games journalists do not."
In all honesty? A lot of us who know the industry from the inside might find it hard to blame them.
The industry does not love E3 the way that the public does. It costs millions, possibly tens of millions, to put up a major booth. And then you do not get tens of millions of dollars worth of publicity. Instead you get a dice roll. Either conventiongoers love your games, or they crap mightily upon them - and great games can get destroyed in the press just by being unready for the convention. Things that dozens, even hundreds, of people put heart and soul into experience a minor glitch due to a rushed demo, and then careers and studios are destroyed. And there is no compassion, no sympathy at all, for anyone it happens to.
But the one thing that *can* be counted on is that a lot of games journalists who have *no* idea how hard it is to make a game take potshots at everything they can, because that is the snarky, cool tradition of games journalism in the modern era.
https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2015 ... parabolic1
I remember running into an acquaintance from high school who had become a games journo there one year, while I was there as a developer. We all went to a bar after the show - and watching him was very, very educational. He could not *wait* to start tearing down everything he'd seen that year, under the influence of several alcoholic beverages - and it was painful for me to watch, because as the night went on it became very apparent to me how little he actually knew about games or development. He was a fanboy turned journo, with no real journalistic experience, and was out for attention by any means, fair or foul, and loving what he got in that direction that night - and sadly that is the standard for the game industry, not the exception, though of course there are some very good journalists out there as well with a profound love and respect for the medium.
Now of course the industry tried to *cancel* E3 for these reasons - and it turned out that the industry really needs E3 after all. It may be a giant, wasteful, lavish, pandering party - but it's the best damned giant, wasteful, lavish, pandering party the industry can throw, and it's part of the culture, and too many people have a deep and abiding love for it to turn it to anything but what it is.
And I'm not saying that any of these things excuse the corporate abuses we've all become accustomed to in the industry - the DLC profiteering, the missed release dates, the always-on DRM requirements that shatter games and fun, the lies, and so on. Penny Arcade again spoke to that side of it as well:
https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/09/29
But if you ever have to ask "why is x company bunting/not showing much at E3 during x year" - well, there you go.
“I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong."
--Frederick Douglass