Topic: Next Nintendo Direct?

I admit to being one of those (many) people who started the series with New Horizons. And as one of those people... I honestly have no interest in going backwards in the series; it just doesn't feel like that kind of series to me. New Horizons is the traditional one for me because it's the one I've played 😝 Would I be happy with a new game which includes some of those New Leaf features you are mentioning? sure. Would I buy New Leaf HD? Probably not.

btw, I think it is unfair to say ACNH doesn't have some of the things in your list-- it has coffee shop, wedding island.. sure the shoe store and garden store are now booths but that added a whole aspect to the game where you can't get everything every day. And the dream place is your bed/after you go to sleep which is adorable. 😆 I can understand why they decided to make fewer official buildings because it allows more room for customizing your island. That said, I'm also happy to see new changes in the next game.

@FishyS Yeah I think a new entry should take some notes from both games, as both do better in different aspects.

The buildings being replaced by smaller/outside things doesn’t feel as fun, even though it serves a similar purpose. (at least to me). The garden shop, shoe store, Club LOL, and the others all had their own music, but now they are just kinda put in the town center. I do like the idea of not having everything available every day, and New Leaf also explored that a bit with Redd, Sahara, etc., it definitely brings charm to hopping on every day for something different to happen.

@PikminMarioKirby
I prefer ACNH than ACNL, for keeping my villagers forever and more The Sims style.

New Horizons leaves it up to you more. I made my own outdoor marketplace, band stand, restaurant and gave them each unique music. It's adorable how the villagers browse your goods or try out the various musical instruments or sit down in your restaurant. I think a new game could do both things if there was more real estate. Technically you can fly places but that was pretty slow; if there were more places you could get to in real time, that would be neat. I hesitate to say the dreaded term 'open world' but ACNH is about as closed as you can get so a little more open/connected wouldn't be bad. Having certain areas you can't control and others you can fully modify would be interesting.

Either way, personally I think Nintendo needs a brand new animal crossing to try to keep some of that huge influx of players from this gen. 2026 would be ideal but who knows.

To me this is the ideal next step for Animal Crossing. A big area (like the town/island) that you can heavily customize, but also a place like City Folk’s City or New Leaf’s Main Street would be a great way to have the best of both worlds.

Also I really like your idea of making a band/other areas and having music for each place! I love when you have a microphone placed, the villagers can sometimes sing a song, it brings a lot of charm to the game.

So when are people predicting a switch 2 announcement? I'm assuming it will be its own presentation, but no idea when.

I choose October.. although that's me being optimistic and hoping we get Switch 2 in early 2025

@Sigran102 My guess (just estimated numbers I think make sense):

July: <1%
August: 4%
September: 19%
October: 38%
November: 1%
December: <1%
January: 2%
February: 10%
March: 25%

I made the ones I think are most likely in bold text. I don’t see July/August being very likely because it seems a bit too early, and the possible Pokemon Presents/game specific Direct in August *could interfere. *NES World Championship releases July and we’re already about half-way through the month without really hearing much about the successor. September/October is a very nice slot because that seems to be a great time for big announcements, and I believe Switch’s full reveal was in October. November, December, and January are during/too near Holiday season to be very likely for a reveal. February seems like a better time for a Direct and I can’t see both the reveal of successor and a Direct in February (more possible in September in my opinion). March is a key spot since that’s also a good time for big announcements well after a potential February Direct, and if I’m thinking right that’s the same month we (pretty much) first heard of the Switch (or ‘NX’ at the time)

@Sigran102 Difficult to say. The tilting point is Nintendo President Furukawa's statement a couple months back. "We will make an announcement about the Switch successor this fiscal year." If you didn't know, Nintendo's fiscal year ends April 1st 2025.

So, depending on your perspective, that could be interpreted in a number of ways.

Announcement soon, unveiling event in 2024, release in 2024? Unlikely.
Announcement in 2024, unveiling event in early 2025, release in March? Possible, but also unlikely.
Announcement in early 2025, unveiling event in Spring (April, May, or June), release in Fall (October, November, or December)? IMO, most likely.

Hrm... yea, my heart wants October, but my mind is thinking January or February.

(And honestly, Jan/Feb would be better if there was only a month or two to wait after the announcement. If they announce in Oct and it won't launch until at least March... woof.)

@Magician This. NH sold way too much for Nintendo to wait until 2030 for the next entry. They're going to want NH early on in the system's lifespan. If anything Splatoon 4 should be the one to wait until 2030 (probably more like 2027/2028 at the pace those entries are coming out really), it sold less and it feels like fans are getting a bit sick of the series because new entries are feeling a bit too samey. I would love to see them take their time with Splatoon 4 and come up with some way to make the next entry feel different from the first 3 (larger maps and Splattle Royale please?). Or maybe they can start thinking spinoff/side entries now, it's certainly a popular enough IP that's been around long enough now for them to start branching out into different styles of gameplay.

Although really I think they should do the same for Animal Crossing and... really a lot of their other popular IPs this gen. If they can put their increased staff towards new teams they can do a bit more of this to counteract lengthening dev times. I'm not really an Animal Crossing fan, but I would love to get into a spinoff entry that's less about the mundane chores and more about other aspects of the formula. I'd love something more like a Tycoon-style entry, maybe give a game of that style to Tom Nook?

This is good and I think generally tracks but I think we can be a bit more cold and objective here. If we assume it'll be announced before April 2025 which is literally what they have said. That rules out April, May, June. If we then assume that July is half as likely given we're half way through it. And if from there we then take the count of Nintendo Directs since they started doing Directs as a measure of when Nintendo "like to announce" things. This is what we get:

July: 3%
August: 15%
September: 14%
October: 14%
November: 13%
December: 9%
January: 8%
February: 15%
March: 8%

Probably not THAT far off and probably about as objective as we can be. Although I personally feel as though December/March are less likely than this suggests and October/September are more likely. But I have nothing really to back this up other than a belief that it's probably launching first half of 2025 which would mean early 2025 is cutting it a bit fine

@skywake September/October feel more likely just because that’s the perfect slot for a H1 release. If it’s H2 release the announcement is more likely to be in the first few months of next year (obviously before April) Your percentages seem pretty likely, but I feel like August is less likely than October. August is possible, but we’ll likely start hearing about Pokemon Legends Z-A that month (probably with Pokemon Presents), and possibly a big Super Mario Party Jamboree presentation that month as well.

@PikminMarioKirby
I don't necessarily disagree I'm just trying to remove what I want to see from the equation. The percentages I posted are not my view of how likely each month is. It's just the ratio of Directs between mid-July and the end of March. But it's probably not a bad proxy for it

My subjective view on it if I try to remove my "wants" from it as much as I can. I'd agree that August is almost surely less likely than my "Direct ratio" measure would suggest. I think August can only really make sense if it's launching this year and I don't think it's launching this year. I'd probably go further and say that September is probably also less likely given that an announcement that early would in some ways require talking about games for it in a September Direct. Which I don't think they'll want. If it's September I think it's either IN the September Direct itself or it's late in September after a Direct.

October? I know it's basically what they did last time so that's why people are clinging to it but.... I think it works fairly well for them. November is similar but towards the end of November I think people shift into a different mindset a bit. Either could work fine for a launch as early as February 2025 but could also still be effective for a launch as late as July or something. December is, as you rightly put it in your number, fairly dead as is January

But I think beyond that I think February is FAR more likely than March. But both are way too late for an announcement if this thing is launching in the first half of 2025. I could see February working for something like an August release but I think that a typical launch of November 2025 or something we've kinda ruled out already with the deadline of an announcement before the end of March

tl;dr: I think October is the most likely if it's launching early next year as most people have speculated. February next year makes sense if it's releasing towards the second half of next year. August only really comes into the equation I think if they surprise us all and release this year (not happening)

and as I send that reply we find out what Emio is about

@skywake Yeah with Famicom Detective Club releasing in late August it makes it seem less likely to be in August, especially if we do get a Pokemon Presents.

I think the September Direct will be the week before Zelda, so if a console announcement is happening that month it’s probably before those things. If not, we’ll have to see about October. Early October is an available slot, probably wouldn’t effect Mario Party’s sales too much.

I was curious if I could take a method similar to Skywake except apply it to console announcements rather than arbitrary announcements... however far too many Nintendo consoles ( e.g. snes, n64, gamecube, wii, switch) were announced multiple years before they were released. Since we are hoping Switch 2 releases next year, I don't think that data is necessarily useful.

Of consoles which did release the year or year after they were revealed (e.g. DS, 3DS, Wii U, GBA) most of them had reveals in Spring and releases in the latter half of the fiscal year, although GBA is a big exception with a September reveal and march release.

I'm hoping for the GBA schedule (Although I would instead guess October reveal with a September mini direct or partner showcase) , but March reveal and Fall 2025 release wouldn't surprise me.

And yes, there are subtleties about date of codename reveal versus official name reveal. The future may say Switch 2 was revealed earlier this year even though we didn't technically get a codename.

Kinda disappointed Emio is just a Famicom Detective Club game. I wasn’t aware anyone bought the other two so really seems strange to go ahead and green light this one and then try and tease it as some kinda horror.

@FishyS Actually I could totally see this being similar to the GBA. Early September and early October are strong points for a potential announcement, and then a H1 release for the console would fit very nicely.

It probably won’t be called ‘Switch Advance’ but I could see it being similar in terms of backwards compatibility, pretty good power upgrade, and the gimmick is pretty similar to the previous console. These things seem pretty likely for the next console, but Nintendo could having something completely different in mind!

Yeah, that has to be the most misleading teaser ever 😆 I guess it got people talking though so effective advertising sort of?

I don't think we ever saw the final sales numbers for the previous Switch famicon detective games. We did see some early sales figures in the 10s of thousands just for Japan physical, so maybe a hundred thousand or 2 total worldwide in all formats? Certainly nowhere near a million or the total would have been published in an investor report thing.

I suspect the games aren't too expensive to make so they could easily be profitable even though it is niche by Nintendo standards. And this release feels a bit like a schedule-filler since there had been no Nintendo game slotted for August.