Topic: Next Nintendo Direct?

Sony never intended for Miles Morales/Horizon/GT7/Ragnarok to be PS5 exclusives. They were announced first on PS5 to hype up the console prior to its release, but their PS4 counterparts were announced just a few months later.

@VoidofLight That's why I said either, given the current pattern for Pokemon remakes follows the same pattern as the original releases it would be a Gen 2 remake in the style of Let's Go:

• Fire Red/Leaf Green (Gen 1 remakes)
• Heart Gold/Soul Silver (Gen 2 remakes)
• Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire (Gen 3 remakes)
• Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee (Gen 1 re-remakes)
• Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl (Gen 4 remakes)
• Gen 2 re-remakes
• Gen 5 remakes
  ...etc.

But ILCA are doing remakes now, not Game Freak so I could see them change it up and do Black/White remakes in the style of BDSP instead.

I personally would really like the Switch successor to be a home-only next-gen console, something approaching 4K graphics and smooth performance. It's something that Nintendo has never really focused on and thus would feel "new" (it'd also really enhance certain games' enjoyment).
Of course, Nintendo producing hardware similar to Sony or Microsoft is highly unlikely as they've never been focused on competition with them (especially the latter recently).

@chapuH Strongly agreed. As much as I love the handheld form, it is clearly not going to work with next gen games.

@Grumblevolcano There's also the wild card that is the possibility of GB games coming to NSO. If (and likely when) that's announced, will Game Freak port the Gen 1 and 2 games to Switch? That might disincentivize them from doing a full remake of Gen 2 and focus on Gen 5 instead. I could easily see GSC NSO ports taking the place of the expected Gen 2 re-remakes and moving on to BW remakes.

As for next gen, I think they'll follow what Microsoft and Sony did in their last two console transition and what Nintendo did with the 3DS -> Switch. They'll have a year or two of cross gen releases and the new Switch will be BC, and then if the next Switch takes off they'll slowly phase out the OG Switch. That seems like the best way to gracefully transition to next gen without suddenly dumping their huge install base. The next gen Switch gets a handful of exclusives and/or optimized versions of new games and can play the Switch's entire back catalogue, but if you're reluctant to upgrade you can still get a healthy lineup of games for a bit before it becomes a necessity.

@Bolt_Strike
Gen 2 will only ever get remade for Switch in the form of another Let's Go game, which I imagine will be treated entirely differently from a NSO GameBoy version of Pokemon Gold/Silver.

Given how there's a load of potential N64 games left, I wouldn't be surprised if GB/GBC/GBA doesn't appear until the Switch's successor irrelevant of when it releases.

On a different note, Nintendo's being oddly quiet. I though they'd be going all out with FE Engage promotion by now.

@Grumblevolcano When this month is Fire Emblem releasing? Is it because they’re doing mini shadow drop Direct perhaps in which they’ll have a trailer?

@FragRed January 20th

@Grumblevolcano So they could be planning a mini Direct for next week which is why they aren’t promoting anything yet. They could have a trailer in the Direct which will be the start of the promotion campaign.

@westman98 They seem to have moved on from the Let's Go games. It was too controversial and didn't bring in additional fans than the average game to compensate, and after seeing BotW's immense success they seem to have completely changed the direction the series took away from mobile still linear games like LGPE and SM and to more BotW-style open world games. And everything positive that LGPE did was integrated into this new direction so there's nothing further they need from that style. LGPE is probably one and done.

@Bolt_Strike
But would doing a standard (non-Let's Go) remake of Gold/Silver again be any different in terms of bringing additional fans than a Let's Go remake?

The next open-world Pokemon game will either be another Legends entry or Gen 10 so that discussion is irrelevant here.

@westman98 No, but it would at least turn less people off to the remake than Let's Go did and minimize criticism. It needs to bring in more fans than usual to justify ignoring their hardcore base, otherwise they could end up losing sales instead of gaining sales.

No, the shift towards open world is completely relevant because it's affecting all of their games, not just new generations. Aside from 1 outsourced remastery remake in BDSP, all of the Pokemon games since SwSh have been moving further and further in the direction of BotW-esque open world. Short of another major philosophy shift in their development practices, the next game will likely follow this direction as well, there's no reason to believe they'll revert back to LGPE when the fans are more or less liking the current direction in the series (aside from issues with performance) and LGPE's direction was very divisive.

@Bolt_Strike
Its worth mentioning that Pokemon Let's Go is the 2nd best-selling Pokemon remake, only behind Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl, so I don't think the game really turned people off or lost sales at all.

I agree that the overall direction of Pokemon from now onward is open-world, but I don't think that applies to the remakes. Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl was even more faithful to the original than any of the prior remakes, even as Legends Arceus and Scarlet/Violet fully embraced the open-world formula.

Regardless of how (or if) Gen 2 is remade, I don't think that has any bearing on whether the original Gold/Silver (or GameBoy games in general) are added to NSO.

@westman98 LGPE is only 70,000 units higher than ORAS, so it isn't better by much and in terms of attach rate, it's actually worse. Notice that the 2 best selling remakes are Switch games, which says more about the Switch than it does about Pokemon remakes. A regular old Kanto remake would've had similar sales, probably even higher sales not getting bogged down by the casual Go mechanics, so by that metric LGPE is a failure. And if they repeat it, the sales will probably go down because the fans that bought LGPE and didn't like it won't be buying the next game.

I don't think Game Freak is interested in making more BDSP-esque remakes, at best they'll just continue outsourcing those to ILCA. I think any remake they work on is going to have some kind of Legends game or similar reimagining alongside it, that seems to be the type of remake they really want to make. But if NSO ports are a thing, they don't even need to outsource remakes to ILCA, they can just port the originals and that will serve the same purpose that BDSP did, again minus the controversy of them being glorified remasters since fans will not be expecting new content in a retro port.

@Bolt_Strike
I think you overemphasize how much the Let's Go catching mechanics hurt the games sales.

With that being said, I do think Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee benefitted from being the first HD Pokemon game playable on a TV screen. Future Let's Go entries won't have such benefits so GameFreak may not make another one for that reason, not because they believe the catching mechanics are bad.

Anyways, I dont think GameFreak will work on remakes ever again - they'll probably just develop new generation entries, DLC, and Legends titles (or if they come up with newer concepts, those too). Even if the Pokemon GameBoy titles are added to NSO, they'll all be emulated, so there will be minimal developer involvement there at best.

@westman98 Yeah, the dude is overemphasizing how the Catching mechanics hurt the sales because he personally doesn't like them, like most Pokemon fans who hate stuff about their "favorite" game series. The game sold well, and even appealed more towards the people who started with GO, however Gamefreak just figured they had no need for another, so they didn't make another. Simple as that.

@SlashFuture
Lower sales for what? Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee? That game launched a year before Sword/Shield.

Also, I dont think Sword/Shield's real world reception was really bad at all. It had a huge launch, sustained strong legs, and is the 2nd biggest-selling game in the series. The next game in the series, Scarlet/Violet, then proceeded to obliterate sales records.

@westman98 Yeah, anyone saying that Sword and Shield sold poorly baffles me. The games weren't great, but they're not as abysmal as many people made them out the be. The main issues were the dex cut (which was going to happen anyways), and then the lack of post-game stuff which is more fair.

To be honest as well, with Pokemon most of the games sell more and more as time goes on, at least in terms of big generation releases. Each game outsells the next for the most part.

@VoidofLight
I don't think Pokemon games are necessarily selling more than ever up until recently with Switch since the platform still maintains a huge playerbase and drives massive Nintendo software sales across the board.

To get back on topic regarding Nintendo Directs, Fire Emblem Engage previews just dropped.