Basically, last year Iwata himself was going to give a massive, awesome keynote to the entire GDC that was going to be the capstone for the conference's 25th anniversary. And it did start out AMAZING and was hugely educational, thought-provoking and inspiring...
... and then, roughly halfway though, Reggie took the stage and literally started shilling the 3DS like a used car salesman.
At first nobody knew what the fuck or what to make of it, but as he kept going on and on the crowd actually began to boo and catcall somewhat; they were here for awesome storytime with Papa Iwata, not to have Uncle Reggie try to push his latest scheme on them. Reggie, either through reading the crowd or serendipitous timing, wrapped it up before the crowd turned ugly enough to be obvious to the recording cameras, but if you were in the crowd itself, the anger over what Nintendo was doing - hijacking a keynote to give a press conference - was palpable.
Eventually Iwata took the stage again and managed to end the thing on a relative high note, but there was a lot of grousing about "the Reggie hijack" for the entire rest of the conference that year.
You have to remember, this isn't supposed to be a mini-E3, no matter what the studio bosses might want; this is meant to be a meeting of developers to network, discuss their craft, and look for new talent, especially during the Expo days (Wed-Fri). While some new technology (like UE4 or the 3DS last year) is shown off to developers so they can get a grip on the new tech and see if they like it, it's meant to be a "for developers by developers" kind of place. It isn't a press event, and I know there've been restrictions placed on press passes this year.
