After last year's E3, where Nintendo spent pretty much an entire hour talking to a snoozing audience about Nintendo Land and then bafflingly announced the 3DS XL and showed Smash Bros on Nintendo Direct broadcasts just weeks later, I wasn't enormously surprised when Nintendo decided to pass on a press conference altogether this time. Frankly, a Nintendo press conference this year would have looked ridiculous next to Microsoft and Sony's gigantic, generation-launching theatrical events; its absence is a straightforward and unselfconscious admission that Nintendo isn't in this fight.

“ A Nintendo press conference this year would have looked ridiculous.

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“ The showcase gave an insight into how Nintendo sees itself now.

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“ Nintendo is endearingly earnest about fun.

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It was the subsequent showcase that gave more of an insight into how Nintendo sees itself as the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One square up to each other this year. Attendees were packed into Nintendo's E3 booth, surrounded by colourful models of Pikmin, Wind Waker's King of Red Lions boat and Mario kart The two producers of Super Mario 3D World came out in little costumes (“I hope you're ready for a presentation by two men over 40 dressed as cats”), peppering their speech with cat-puns that their interpreters bravely struggled to translate. Platinum Games' Hideki Kamiya stood with his arms folded and a slight smile during Bayonetta 2's distinctly un-Nintendo trailer. Later, people hidden within life-size Mario pipes threw plush-toy prizes at the audience. It was all exactly as dorky as it sounds, but also disarmingly sweet.Nintendo is endearingly earnest about fun. Its developers come out and talk excitably about games in which you jump around bright, cheerful worlds collecting coins or bananas, or guide tiny plant-people around a garden, or race flying cars. They don't say meaningless things like “entertainment ecosystem” and “true next-generation engine”; they come across as people who make things rather than corporate robots removed from their charging stations to present for two minutes on a stage.Although all the first-party games that Nintendo showed looked fun, I'm still not seeing the game that's going to persuade people to buy a Wii U. Games like Smash Bros and Mario Kart aren't coming until 2014, leaving 3D World and the Wind Waker remake to lead Nintendo's holiday season this year. Nintendo could weather another tough year for the Wii U – its vast reserves of cash make it probably the most solvent company in the whole games industry, and the 3DS continues to perform very well – but it's strange to see nothing huge on the cards for its second Christmas. Perhaps, once again, Nintendo doesn't want to put itself on the same stage as the Xbox One and PlayStation 4.The first-party line-up was also totally, totally safe, particularly on the Wii U side (Bayonetta 2 excepted). Super Mario 3D World is great fun, but it perhaps hasn't got the Galaxy series' freewheeling creativity. Nintendo is not in a particularly fecund period on that front; perhaps it can't afford to be. Nintendo might have torn up the rulebook when it came to the presentation, but still played it totally straight with the games.The way that Nintendo communicates is changing, and over the past two years Nintendo Direct has become the dominant way that it talks both to fans and the press. It conveniently allows the company to control the message and encourage people to come direct to it for their information, as opposed to telling the media first. It has created its own trailers, interview features and E3 recaps for its Youtube channel. In other words, the company is not interested in being part of the larger conversation; it would rather curate its own.I'm not sure if Nintendo is totally out of touch with everyone else, or if it simply doesn't care. I suspect it's a bit of both. Its E3 showing put fun first, showing plenty of reliably entertaining games; it didn't do anything to make the Wii U look essential to people who haven't already bought one, but it provided plenty of reassurance to those who already have. Skipping the press conference might have been a tacit admission that Nintendo couldn't compete on Sony and Microsoft's terms, but blatantly Nintendo isn't interested in competing on those terms any more.

Keza MacDonald is in charge of IGN's games coverage in the UK. You can follow her on IGN and Twitter