Topic: Next Nintendo Direct?

I could imagine an ARMS II for Switch II... do you think it would be a console exclusive or cross-generation? 🤔 I don't have a good sense of how resource-intensive arms is and of course we aren't sure Switch 2 won't have some new motion-related gimmick/tweak. I could sort of imagine ARMS as a game announced now but we later find out there is some extra special feature in the Switch 2 version.

@Grumblevolcano
Yeah, that's probably a fair timeline I think. I think we almost surely see Mario Kart again soon in some form but what form that takes who knows. Could be another compilation of stuff plus some tracks or even effectively more tracks for 8 even if it's not marketed like that. Few ways that could go down. Maybe they reboot the franchise and do something totally unexpected with it. Maybe it's entirely predictable and the unexpected thing is some new IP entirely

Who knows

But all I know is what I want is just.... more tracks.... more variety of tracks... higher fidelity tracks....

@FishyS
I'd think Arms as a title would be pretty light in terms of resources required. There's a reason why those kind of 3D fighters in the early 00's were so common and some of the biggest graphical showpieces. Same deal with rail shooters. When you have a relatively small space like that with a very locked down camera you can control what needs to be loaded and rendered out very predictably

More tracks are nice but I'd love a real story mode where things happen and then you have to do a 1 on 1 race against Donkey Kong or whatever to get him to join you. Maybe save the the world (or the Toad who was in charge of the international racing consortium and got kidnapped) along the way with lots of varied races inbetween plot segments.

Having lots of crazy characters like Skywake suggested would also be very fun.

@skywake EA collab for Mario Kart Underground. Ubi collab for The Klub. Endless possibilities

Acclaim comes back for a collab... Extreme-K.

Think about it

You're omitting several factors I mentioned in my post to make this look more even then it actually is. For one, Tour got its tracks over the course of 4 years whereas the average Mario Kart game gets that much at launch. Second, 8 got DLC within a year and that included 9 new tracks. Third, we know that Tour was in development for at least a year before release since it was first teased on January 2018 (and it was probably in development for at least another year before then). So it's more like 14 original tracks in 6 or 7 years for Tour vs. 25 original tracks in 4 years for 8. Night and day difference here, Tour shows easily 1/2 or even 1/3 of the effort/output than 8 did.

Which was likely some work but not a lot, since they were mainly touching up assets. Certainly not nearly enough to make up the disparity I pointed out with the original courses. And if you pay enough attention to Tour's assets, you'll notice they did a lot of recycling of assets from past games and courses. For one, there's a lot of 3DS courses and elements, which seems to imply that the game was just built on 7's engine and assets. Second, they tended to have a lot of stock assets for the game and anytime they reused a course they just pulled assets from that instead of actually remaking the courses unique elements. For example, you'll notice that levels that use cannons, such as DK Mountain and Summit, just have a glider ramp with a barrel around it so it's really just a dressed up, scripted glider section, and you see Mushroom Gorge's bouncing mushrooms and Dino Dino Jungle's dinosaur reused in multiple other courses as well. Sure they might've spent a little bit of time touching up the models to fit the game's performance and artstyle, but for the most part, Tour's courses have the feel of just copy/pasting assets from 7 to create "new" and "remade" courses, and the BCP did the same for Tour. Nothing in these two games really screams "we spent anywhere close to 6 years on this". I could see maybe 3 or 4 years at best, but definitely not 6.

Plus the reworked SNES/GBA/N64 tracks which are effectively entirely new works. The resolution bumps for DS/GC/Wii tracks which were much the same. And the other projects alongside that would've pulled resources.....

Hardly a 7 year gap with nothing

Yeah no, the SNES/GBA/N64 tracks feel like they're just using similar assets to 7 and the resolution bump for the DS/GC/Wii tracks don't feel very tangible. It does feel like a 7 year gap with nothing.

I'd say the MK8 DLC is pretty low effort. They didn't even really bother with trying to fit it into the game's actual art style at all. Everything looks like cheap low quality plastic.

Here’s my bingo for whenever the next Nintendo Direct happens lol

@DiamondCore I mean... Switch 2 and Metroid Prime 4 are probably correlated but they don't share any possible bingos... and kid icarus isn't happening. No comment on Pizza Tower. 🤔 Assuming Switch 2 isn't announced that doesn't leave many options for bingo.

The anti-diagonal seems most plausible since Splat 3 and luigi mansion date seem likely and Metroid prime 2 or zelda wouldn't be a shocker.

Row 3 and 5 both seem... slightly possible. And second column.

Unless you get the anti-diagonal I'm thinking you get several squares but no bingo. If you somehow get a different bingo I'm just going to assume your uncle works at Nintendo.

Microsoft have the first dibs on unveiling Silksong. It won't be in a Direct until then.

@FishyS Yeah, i feel like the diagonals are the most plausible out of these lol

I kind of just filled spaces near the end of making this, so some of these columns are a bit unlikely

I probably would've replaced DKC remakes with Hi-Fi Rush and Mario Party 12 with something like Hades II if I made this today instead of like a week ago

@GrailUK I'm in denial, i can dream D:

Imagine if Palworld comes to Switch and is announced through gritted teeth.

I'd think Arms as a title would be pretty light in terms of resources required. There's a reason why those kind of 3D fighters in the early 00's were so common and some of the biggest graphical showpieces. Same deal with rail shooters. When you have a relatively small space like that with a very locked down camera you can control what needs to be loaded and rendered out very predictably

A page or so back we had people saying Animal Crossing doesn't need next-gen. But there's an experience that is limited by a locked camera. As well as it sells, no-one will ever convince me that Animal Crossing needs to keep its fixed camera angle. A 360 camera is my number one wish for that series. More headroom in the hardware will allow that. Likewise, black screen delays whenever you enter/exit a building/room? **** that ****. It's almost 2025, I can free roam seamlessly in and out of rooms and caves across Hyrule, but I can't roam a poxy island without black loading screens anytime I want to go indoors?

Animal Crossing absolutely needs next gen otherwise it just becomes a slightly prettier iteration of the GameCube original.

Throwing this out there for games not on NSO they could announce. Here's a list of million sellers on the GB/GBC that currently aren't on NSO, excluding third party stuff:

• Pokemon, all of them
• Wario Land 1 & 2
• Donkey Kong Land 1, 2, 3
• Yoshi (Mario & Yoshi here)
• Donkey Kong
• Kirby's Pinball Land
• Golf
• Tennis
• Baseball
• Alleyway
• Tetris 2
• Game & Watch Gallery 1 & 2
• Qix

These ones are the same but they also skipped the 3DS VC

• Super R.C. Pro-Am
• F1 Race
• Yoshi's Cookie
• Pokemon Pinball
• Donkey Kong Country
• Tetris DX

Some of these? I'm fine if they don't appear. Couldn't care less, doesn't matter. You're not really missing THAT much not having the GBC port of Donkey Kong Country or the GB version of Mario & Yoshi. I had both of those as a kid, huge nostalgia for them, you don't need the GB versions

But some of these other titles that are missing currently...... it's just crazy they're not on there. For me when I remember the Gameboy as a kid? It's Donkey Kong Land, Tetris, Mario & Yoshi, Pokemon, Pokemon Pinball, Mario Tennis, Gameboy Gallery. There were others for sure but for me those were my core Gameboy games. Most of those aren't on NSO

I know, I know, Gameboy is kinda the forgotten system of NSO. People just don't really care that much for GB unless it's Pokemon. I just feel like there are some gaping holes here that they just have to be looking at filling up. If I was to guess what would be in their next Direct or even just as a quiet shadow drop on YouTube one day? It just has to be something for GB clearing a hole from the above list

@skywake Pokemon is worth more than 15 quid a year lol on it's own!

@gcunit Its because Animal Crossing has a specific rendering technique that makes it better for the developers to say with a fixed camera, rather than giving a free one outdoors. Each game is rendered on a cylindrical world, and only the front of structures are actually rendered as well. While you "Don't see a reason," its one of the main reasons why New Horizons can afford to look so good on current gen hardware. Not only this, but the world being rendered the way that they render it is apart of the charm of the series. It isn't broken, therefore it shouldn't really need fixing.

Its already bad enough that New Horizons pretty much got rid of a lot of the series' charm, so changing the camera would only cause a series that's losing its charm to suffer more.

The "Black screen delays" are also loading screens. They exist given how a game like Animal Crossing is far more complex and detailed than the interiors inside the world of BotW/TotK. Mainly due to them being "Player generated content," and thus the game has to store the information within it's memory. BotW and TotK can get away with it, since the world is so massive that towns don't actually load in until you get closer towards them. However, Animal Crossing isn't an open world game. It has a confined "island" or "town," with smaller and more restrictive space. Thus it wouldn't work, as the entire town would have to be loaded in instead. If the next Nintendo Console has an SSD, I could see it being a bit more possible to have an Animal Crossing game without loading screens, but I don't know if its even possible to get an SSD running on a handheld console, let alone one that'll probably be on the cheaper end due to needing to attract families.

@DiamondCore I feel column 3 feels the most likely:

• Mainline Mario Party has been every 3 years for the past decade (MP9 in 2012, MP10 in 2015, Super Mario Party in 2018, Superstars in 2021) so 2024 would fit
• NSO only has 1 worldwide GBA game and 1 Japan exclusive GB game left so announcing more NSO games makes sense even if it's just something like "To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Smash, here's the N64 game for NSO"
• Sonic games usually appear in Directs so we'll likely get more info on Sonic X Shadow Generations

Prime 4 is the biggest question, I could see them doing Prime 2+3 and then afterwards teasing Prime 4 but on the other hand if it's a crossgen release they may want to save it for the next system reveal instead.

@GrailUK
Sure but at the same time it's not like they're selling thede Pokemon games anywhere else. And it'd not only help to drive subscriptions but it would also break the (false) perceptions that the NSO library is "small"

Anyways, I was mostly talking about stuff like Pinball, Wario Land, Donkey Kong Land