Topic: Next Nintendo Direct?

@Bolt_Strike no please don’t say that 😔
@Grumblevolcano thanks for the info! hopefully we get our June direct and this doesn’t surpass the longest drought

@Keman Finally...a grounded human being on the forum!

It was a great direct if you're a cat lover.

@Keman I do partially agree. I was never angrier at Nintendo fans than when the first Direct of I think 2021 happened, and it was almost nothing but awesome games (even the games that didn't seem hype turned out to be awesome!) and people tried to undersell it as mid. Inexcusable. Nintendo's been on an incredible winning streak, and barring a handful of specific issues, mostly in just a handful of specific games, anyone who denies that should be ignored. I lived through the Wii U, even as someone who liked it, its impossible to overstate the difference. No your subjective opinions don't matter compared to game droughts followed by Amiibo Festival. I genuinely could never buy a new system again and never run out of quality games to buy in my life just based on what is on the Switch.

However, Sony's failings at putting out first party games has in fact made parts of the fanbase meltdown, I saw it, it was funny. Also Sega has Sonic fans, nuff said.

And then you've got Microsoft's fans, who are doomer central at the moment.

For all the grumbling, Nintendo's fanbase seems far and away the most positive of the big three at the moment.

To be fair, given Nintendo's success at the moment, Snoy and Microsoft fans are quick to point out the Switch isn;t the primary console for a lot of people. So maybe we have just adopted a lot of Sony and Microsoft fans lol.

@GrailUK I feel like pretty much every one here's been fairly grounded lately tbh... just a bunch of dedicated fans wishfully thinking about the future in a thread designed for us to do so. The typical "grounded person" lectures that imply we actually think there's nothing to play on switch and that the world's gonna end because of that are kind of unnecessary right now imo.

@GrailUK I feel like a good portion of us have learned not to take our current games for granted, and use this "quiet time" to appreciate the great games we've seen up to this point. I've been going through my backlog for quite a while now, and though things have been more silent from Nintendo sure, I don't feel nearly as much of an "Oh my God Nintendo, just announce something already!" Would a Switch 2 be nice? Without question. Am I sick of games struggling to run at even a decent frame rate? Absolutely. Make no mistake though, for all the people who whine and say "We haven't gotten anything in so long." I'd disagree. At that point, you've gotta take a step back and realize, we've been doing pretty great recently. 2023 alone has been one of the best years for the Switch. Lots of us have backlogs that could last us an entire system generation. It's fun to speculate what's next, and at the end of the day we're just doing it for a fun conversation, but when people constantly whine and say "Next game, next game!" It's easy for adults to forget that, as kids, we only got one or two new games every now and then. Even though things are quiet, there's plenty of masterpieces out there already, they just need to get off the keyboard and find them if they can. And if they can't, there's plenty of threads on here to help them do just that.

(Edit: @Noble_Haltmann sums it up better than I could.) Also, in regards to Directs, there's a really good point made by a youtuber GetMadz a while back where he talked about Direct hype. He basically said something along the lines of "No matter who you are, no matter what you like, each Nintendo Direct announcement has someone hyped, even if you yourself don't really like it. They're not all gonna be tailored specifically for you, and that's okay." Sorry for the long rant. If it's clogging up the thread, I can remove it.)

I dunno why everyone gets excited for the indie Directs. After they have finished, everyone including myself just jumps onto the forums to say how underwhelming they were. Nintendo always seems to get the left overs that Sony or Microsoft didn’t want to promote.

The Indie Direct just now was quite good.
There are some indie games I have interest about.
The peoples who reacted negatively with indie games probably only thinking games like Zelda or Metroid are the only one to play and consider the other games are trash.

@OctolingKing13 It's a scenario you should be mentally prepared for even if I do end up being wrong. Definitely a scenario where you should expect the worst and be pleasantly surprised if it happens sooner.

@Anti-Matter It's all subjective, dude. No need to belittle and make assumptions about people just because they don't like all the same things you do.

@FragRed Most people are not excited about most indie games until they come out so I fail to see the problem? Especially since half of the major indie games that miss out on Nintendo then later get ported to and sell well on Nintendo.

But I will say that its been much harder to get immediately excited for the indie directs the past couple of years, as much of the games kinda become one giant blob of "things I'll probably never get around to". Which is a shame because a decade ago, a lot of them would've gotten more hype and stood out more but when there's 1000 indie games vying for attention, "good" doesn't always cut it.

But this was actually better than some of the recent ones anyway. At least some of them stood out to me and one of the games I've played before and another is a sequel to a game I loved so...more excited than usual tbh.

The trouble i have with the Nindie scene is that, upon reveal, very few of them wow me. There's usually plenty that catch my eye and I make some sort of mental note to keep tabs on it, look for reviews etc. but then they release and... I very, very rarely buy them straight away. The reason being, they tend to avoid Day 1 physical releases, and usually don't even reference plans for a physical release at all. And I never pay more than £10 (usually wait til they're sub-£5) for a digital purchase. So the reality is usually that I see a new indie and just assume it'll be ages before I can play it. Instant hype killer.

It is really hard to say what the status of a Direct is right now. The rumor mill isn't really going, and what has been said indicates one could maybe air in late May or early June, with Nintendo reportedly readying a prominent marketing campaign for Metroid that'll presumably build up to Metroid Prime 4 (which could potentially mean Prime 2 and 3 remasters handed off to the co-developers of the first game's remaster will come). Still, Endless Ocean Luminous has had a story mode alluded to on its online page, but we don't really know anything more than the fact it exists, and given Nintendo's on a streak of offering demos this year, I imagine they won't pass up rolling out one for it, considering it's less conventional and could use the marketing boost. And the remake of The Thousand-Year Door has some QOL changes that still haven't been detailed, and might even have some new content (especially if it's anything like previous Mario RPG remakes). It's just really hard to say if trailer drops might cover them or not, especially in the case of the latter - not even Mario Day gave us a trailer for it.

@PikaPhantom In regards to the topic of Metroid, I feel like we could potentially see a general direct with a big Metroid-oriented segment. They could talk about Prime 4, shadow drop 2+3 upscales like Pikmin 1+2 (I see that being more likely than something on par with Prime Remastered, but I'd LOVE to be wrong.) and then mention Zero Mission being on NSO for the game's 20th anniversary in Japan. A lot of people seem to think that Prime 4 is going to end up being Switch 2 exclusive, and while I do think it'll receive some pretty substantial boosts in the graphics department, I suspect they'll keep their word and put in on base Switch as well. Sure, the game got effectively restarted, but don't forget that Nintendo also put BotW on the borderline-dead Wii U. Not to mention that all these years it's been advertised as a Switch game, I don't think they're going to go back on that word. As for Endless Ocean and Paper Mario, I could see them doing some small mini-segments like they did with Mario RPG or Splatfests. If they can dedicate time to talking about amiibo and IRL events, I could see a couple small clips of them talking about the new content to EO and TTYD as well. As for their big opener and one-more-thing, I could easily see Wind Waker being the starter and have that big Metroid segment towards the end with Prime 4 closing it out. (Not really an original take here, but given the nature of how system libraries are before they transition to next-gen, none of this would feel out of place or TOO big apart from maybe Prime 4. Prime 4 will be big, huge even given how long fans have waited. But let's remind ourselves that in the grand scheme of the Nintendo pantheon, it's more niche. Hopefully Prime 4, along with the success of Dread, changes people's perspectives. Until then though, it remains niche and wouldn't feel out of place this year. That's just my perspective anyway.)

@Novamii Endless Ocean Luminous's overview trailer just dropped with no demo in sight, so that's...something, alright

Some of us are positive and delusional! 😃 Like the people who are always expecting silksong and metroid prime 4 😝

I do find it funny how last year around this time of year everyone was also saying there would be almost nothing in second half of 2023 and then we got a flood. Personally I'm expecting a decent June Direct. Perhaps that one will have the games this year and the September Direct will just be about Switch 2 (or a mini or partner showcase with the Switch 2 direct later in Fall). Sure, this year won't be anywhere as near packed as last year with a half a dozen entries which ended up in the game awards, some in many categories. But we are getting 6 decent to quite good Nintendo games first half of year as well as a handful of great third party games. We will be getting some more good games second half of year even if the Switch 2 delay causes some gaps in the schedule.

Since you mentioned PS5... humorously, the NintendoLife discord channel was just complaining about how few PS5 exclusives exist. Maybe Nintendo fans just have super high standards because Nintendo spoils us. 😆

@PikaPhantom Shoot, did that just happen? Well...that is indeed something. Still, I stick with the idea of a late May/early June direct. It's been mentioned to kingdom come at this point, but it supports the theory: the shareholder conference. There's either going to be two outcomes of the meeting:
Option 1. We finally learn teensy details about the next system, with a proper reveal in late fall/early winter.
Option 2. Nintendo reveals at least a couple games, before the meeting, as a way of drawing the focus to something else. As I've said before, I highly doubt people will be there to ask about things like Paper Mario or Luigi's Mansion. They want new, and without info on new games, they're naturally going to be more inclined to ask "Where are the games?" which would not doubt kick up more next-gen talk. At least, moreso than before.

It's weird that after watching the Direct I came away thinking it was just OK, but I've bought one game already and wishlisted another five, so I guess it was better than I thought. That's actually more than the last 'proper' Direct (bought 0, four on the wishlist).