Topic: E3 2021 Predictions!!!

@I-U I highly doubt Nintendo views Mario Kart Tour or Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit as main entries, they're both blue ocean experiments meant to bring new fans to the series. Tour is a mobile game which they explicitly said they were using to get mobile gamers interested in buying their IPs on Switch. Home Circuit is a blue ocean hardware peripheral gimmick meant to crossover with the toy market, they want to sell it to kids that would buy toy race cars. Neither of those are considered main entries, a main entry would have to be aimed at hardcore gamers/general audiences and sell as a $60 retail game on Nintendo hardware. ARMS being the same genre as Smash wouldn't be a sufficient reason for them not to release a sequel. They have 4 platforming IPs running right now FFS! They could keep both as long as they have a different take on both. And you still didn't answer the question of what you think that team has been working on since 2017.

2D Metroid being tied to Paper Mario gives it more legitimacy actually. They rumored both Paper Mario and 2D Metroid and Paper Mario happened, so there's a good chance that 2D Metroid is real too. Just because it didn't show in 2020 doesn't mean they were wrong, remember that 2020 was a very unusual year because of the pandemic so 2D Metroid was probably planned for 2020 and delayed to 2021. There's been a lot of other rumors pointing towards 2D Metroid too, so it's probably real.

Again, most of their IPs tend to follow 3 year dev cycles. So many of the devs that released something in 2017/2018 should have something new to show by now. That includes:

-The Splatoon team (confirmed)
-The Zelda team (confirmed)
-The Mario Kart/ARMS team
-The 3D Mario team
-MercurySteam
-HAL Laboratory
-Monolith Soft

Knowing what the different dev teams worked on and when their last project released helps you predict what's going to be releasing next. That's why I think we should expect big for this year, if you look at past patterns, 2011 had a big year, then 2012 and 2013 were a bit smaller. Then 2014 was a big year, then 2015 and 2016 were smaller. Then 2017 was big and 2018 and 2019 were smaller. Granted it's not 100% in that pattern, some of the "smaller" years were bigger than others (2013 and 2019 were semi-big, but not quite as big as the "big" years), but this has more or less held for the last decade. Therefore 2020 was probably meant to be big, but the pandemic hit so those projects probably got pushed to this year, so we should be due for an up year this year. If you don't want to be disappointed, that's fine, I respect that, but you're probably going to be pleasantly surprised with this year. The development patterns imply there should be some bigger games coming this year.

@Bolt_Strike I mean, Japan went under lockdown multiple times this year, and the dev for final fantasy XVI said to expect to see how hard the pandemic hit the gaming industry this year.

@VoidofLight I do think 2021 lineup will be hit more than 2020, we can already see this on the PS5 1st party front for example:

• Miles Morales - November 12th 2020 (not delayed)
• Sackboy - November 12th 2020 (not delayed)
• Demon's Souls - November 12th 2020 (not delayed)
• Destruction All Stars - November 12th 2020 -> February 2nd 2021
• Returnal - March 19th 2021 -> April 30th 2021
• Ratchet & Clank - Early 2021 -> June 11th 2021
• Gran Turismo 7 - 2021 -> 2022
• Horizon Forbidden West - 2nd half of 2021
• God of War sequel - 2021

3 haven't been delayed which launched with the PS5 in 2020 and 2 are not currently delayed but may get delayed in the future (I do think God of War sequel will be 2022), everything else got delayed.

Lots of 3rd party games have also gotten delayed, as for Xbox can't really look at delays on the 1st party front as there was very little announced to begin with (Halo Infinite delay was major last year but that's it).

So probably best to really tame expectations on the Nintendo front, particularly regarding new games.

@Grumblevolcano Nintendo’s a Japanese company, and they had trouble with working from home, compared to Sony’s American studios.

@VoidofLight then they get only backlash from that. And Legends: Arceus is new game to introduce new enchantments that will be used with new Gens not a remakes.

@SViper I’m.. done arguing with you. Not worth trying to reason with you at all honestly. You clearly don’t understand what I’m saying.

@VoidofLight from what I saw, you tried to book in Legends: Arcues in Remakes talk. And if there won't be enchantments from newer generation like New Typings, Moves, Move Sets and etc, so it could backlash more then announcement of cutting Pokémon with 8th Gen. Plus that is my wish from past knowledge on Remakes, because past Remakes allowed use Pokémon beyond original game around at post game time knowing that it allowed play against other ML games in that generation. Plus I not arguing, just saying and you wouldn't said what you said now if you would read what other person mentioned as well, because previous sentence was small repeat of him.
Edit: and probably the 1 on 1 part is meant for mostly story, so post game most likely open up for even more things.

@SViper There were Pokemon in the remakes that weren't in the original games because you could play with players of the new games of the same gen.

• Ruby/Sapphire Emerald could play with Fire Red/Leaf Green
• Diamond/Pearl/Platinum could play with Heart Gold/Soul Silver
• X/Y could play with Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire

So they'd only do the same thing for Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl if you could play with Sword/Shield players which I doubt will be the case. I do think they'd update Pokemon in the Platinum Dex to include fairy type but not add Pokemon like Sylveon.

Only a few weeks away! I'm increasingly getting more and more excited as as each week passes.

@Slowdive for sure. Just sitting down for a week and watching all the presentations will be fun in general.

Well just as @Grumblevolcano is trying to suppress our expectations @WoomyNNYes has a similarly fair point too. Japan's vaccination programme is leaps and bounds behind the rest of the world (ie US, UK). Meaning their entire workforce hasn't come back to work yet. Could be a case of Nintendo succumbing to this as well.

My headcanon is that this is not true and that Nintendo have everything under the sun prepared for us. Who knows?

@Grumblevolcano with Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Rescue Team DX they add some 4th Gen Pokémon and Sylveon, so just saying.

Some pretty chunky info came out today for both Pokemon and Monster Hunter. Info I would've expected to see in Nintendo's E3 direct/digital event. I wonder if that means they have bigger things in store? Or maybe just poor marketing management. But eh, one can hope.

Xbox E3 has been announced:

It's combined Xbox + Bethesda, 90 minutes and starts at 10am Pacific Time.

I wouldn’t be shocked if Nintendo announces theirs today too now that Microsoft has and it was due to all the E3 partners agreeing to announce their plans on the same day.

Looks like Summer Game Fest is getting more partners announced next week.

Hopefully Nintendo gets added.

Don’t see why Nintendo would do summers game fest. It’s two days before e3, and Nintendo could just opt to show everything at one event instead of two separate ones. @Grumblevolcano

yeah, they're way behind everyone ..... just whatever you do don't look a bit south of Japan

With that said, in terms of WFH? I would think Nintendo would be pretty well placed to take advantage of it. They are a technology company, they develop software. Speaking from my own experience there wasn't much difference between the forced WFH and going to the office. If anything in some respects the forced reliance of video chat and other collaboration methods meant we were more productive when it came to collaborating with interstate offices.

I wouldn't think that Nintendo's productivity would have been hit much at all by COVID. Especially with the quality of the internet infrastructure in Japan. And in particular given the fact that Nintendo would already be very used to collaborating between different development teams, second party companies etc.

I’m tempted to change my prediction now and say there will be 3 Directs. One for the Pro reveal, one for a general Direct and one for Zelda’s anniversary. Plus I’d add in GTA5 coming to the Switch Pro the same day as the other versions.

@skywake with Nintendo they are peculiar company though, they have the odd to us customs of Japan plus they are a Kyoto Company which are even odder. I’ve heard stories of Japanese companies struggling to adapt because of things like sign offs so people are travelling to their work building just to get a signature. I’ve had to deal with insane clients at my work who refuses to accept a digital signature so I’ve had to wait an extra week for the board of directors to post a document to each other. In theory they should be able to adapt but it depends on how willing they are.

In any case Coivd has hit the gaming industry so it almost certainly has affected Ninty to some degree.

I have a feeling Cyberpunk 2077 will be a Switch Pro game. On a super big cart. Not sure if that's good these days lol.