And as I said, it's clear that Nintendo has calculated that the net result of this live conference is economically inferior to its logistics and costs. I'm not just talking about explicit costs here, but also implicit costs.
When Nintendo has a live press conference:
1) Despite planning and coordination, the event can be unpredictable (cf. Miyamoto's Skyward Sword messup). Digital events are always 100% on-point. The only unpredictability is the reliability of the hosting servers, but Nintendo is getting rid of that concern by broadcasting through a wide variety of hosts (Twitch, YouTube, Ustream, Nico Nico, etc.) And, you can have that hosting server problem with livestreams of normal pre-E3 conferences as well.
2) It's from a Japanese company to an English-speaking audience that requires on-the-fly translators / interpreters, and can result in a less-than-seamless experience. In a Nintendo Direct / digital event, you can put up subtitles, or have an English voice seamlessly dub over Japanese speakers.
3) It costs more to host a massively-hyped pre-E3 press conference than a Smash Bros. tournament. Regardless if they rented out the actual theater, maintaining a massive-scale, live presentation is more difficult and expensive than just broadcasting it digitally.
4) It's presented to the press / industry figures instead of directly to the consumer. With a digital event, you can cut out the fluff + focus more on going in-depth (like when we visited the Platinum studios for Bayonetta 2) that you might not be able to do in a live conference.
5) Nintendo can more effectively leverage the event as a marketing tool. Conferences to the press are immediately judged with cheering...lack of cheering...near-silence, etc. These can have significant impacts on their momentum. Conferences to the consumer allows each person to derive their own opinion about the announcements at their own pace without any judgments immediately imposed upon them by the press.
6) This one is a bit silly. As we all know, Iwata-san isn't exactly a native English speaker. Iwata feels more comfortable with the pre-recorded Direct / digital events where he can re-record himself any time he messes up. Digital events are more relaxed environments for presenters, and it allows them to make appearances without actually flying to LA and standing in front of the press.
7) In Nintendo's opinion, attending E3 with a bunch of events + holding a cross-country E3 demo promotion + hosting a digital pre-E3 conference will have MORE BENEFIT FOR NINTENDO than a pre-E3 conference in terms of engaging the average consumer with their brand of marketing. All of the "value" that's lost from these gaudy presentations...Nintendo doesn't imagine they will lose anything significant.
The last one is key. Clearly there are people in this thread who disagree with that last point, and that's certainly a very valid way of looking at things.
There is a reason why Activision + EA + Microsoft + Sony do these conferences every year, and that's an important point to keep in mind.