Am I misreading the Iwata announcement? It seemed pretty standard. He basically just wrote 'don't expect new hardware or something as big as last years' Here is the quote: "At E3 this year, we are not planning to launch new hardware, and our main activity at E3 will be to announce and have people experience our software. " This doesn't seem small, but exactly as expected. He also mentioned splitting up announcements to have some specific for fans and some for business. This makes sense to me.
I did not see that Nintendo is planning a small showing. However, it will hopefully (For Sony and Microsoft's sake) be a lot smaller than the companies debuting new hardware.
What Nintendo needs to do is show a Mario Kart/Smash Bros. or the like and be done. Sounds like this is happening.