Topic: Next Nintendo Direct?

@Sigran102 Maybe it's more about preventing Nintendo's servers from crashing? There were a lot of signups as an unknown feature but it didn't affect Nintendo's servers at all. It was no Pokemon Bank or Smash Ultimate DLC situation, that's for sure.

If the feature turned out to be something like a mainline Pokemon NSO app with them testing link cable and Pokemon Home functionality, people trying to sign up for the playtest may have completely crippled Nintendo's servers.

@VoidofLight
My view is that it's not Switch 2 related, which should be obvious given it is a playtest on the Switch. But the reason to build this kind of hype for it now is indirectly Switch 2 announcement related. But only in the sense that they need to make it clear to people now that Switch and NSO specifically isn't being abandoned

There's a risk if they say nothing about NSO and then just drop a Switch 2 announcement out of nowhere people might choose to not renew their membership thinking maybe NSO is not on Switch 2. But if they say "hey, there's stuff for NSO coming even before you get the Switch 2"? Then maybe I let that payment go out when the renewal notice comes up

Specifically I look at my email, I subscribed to NSO+ on the first day I could. I have an email from a couple of weeks back giving me a deadline to cancel it before they automatically charge me.....
Termination of the Next Automatic Renewal Possible Until: 30/10/2024

And this playtest:
Wednesday, 10/23/2024 06:00 p.m. PDT to Tuesday, 11/05/2024 04:59 p.m. PST

........ I don't think that's a co-incidence

Since GameCube is my tertiary priority, I can use my Wii machine to play some GameCube games and the games I can get from my local shopping website is depend on the available stock and I don't buy the GameCube games in heartbeat since a lot of 1st party GameCube games are really expensive now, not to mention I still have less hype level with 1st party Nintendo games on GameCube since I didn't grow up by GameCube games when I was teenager.

Reckon we will get a Direct closer to the time of the playtest? Possibly a specific one. Could be why we didn't get one in September (aside from having 2 back to back in August lol.) I'm not sure, why would they NDA it if they were going to say something before. Dunno.

I feel like the playtest has to be something interesting if they actually want to do some testing, because 10000 people is not a very big sized test group. If it's just testing some technical improvements, social media feature etc people will bounce off it quickly because it's not interesting and they won't get much data.

I feel there has to a least be a game to play with the test, and the 2,2 gig download size probably suggest there might be. But who knows really.

@GrailUK
A similar "NDA" had the Switch Sports play test. And we all saw Switch Sports beforehand.
And I don't think this is really an NDA. NDAs don't ask people to not share anything. It's more like a request. Nothing more.

There’s supposedly a huge Pokemon leak happening now. This might have confirmed Switch 2’s codename as Ounces and probably includes a bunch of other Pokemon related things (possibly including source code for some older titles). I guess we’ll have to see if we hear any more.

This also may include codenames for both announced and unannounced Pokemon games.

@Ulysses They got their clicks and engagement. Now they'll string you along for the latter half of this month I guess.)

@PikminMarioKirby It hasn't been confirmed if this is an actual leak or not yet. Unless people get ahold of the files and root through them themselves, it can pretty much be easily faked.

@Ulysses The best way to get the info is from the Pokeleaks subreddit. The original poster of the leaks privated their account.

@Ulysses There's a lot of people who are trying to avoid giving any specific links to avoid the Nintendo Ninjas, so I'm playing cautiously. Nintendeal on Twitter/X said something about it and it looks like the post was taken down (even though they didn't give any specific links!). @VoidofLight is right though, that's a good way to see the info. Some people on other website's forums are talking about it as well.

@VoidofLight Yeah no confirmation yet, but I'm leaning towards it being legit. Once the source code releases that would be good evidence towards this being real.

The only problem with that day is that it's a Sunday. What happens with the Playtest that day?

Nintendo often avoids Sunday announcements, although this year Mario Day was on Sunday, and that was the day they revealed new Mario Movie (2026) and release dates for TTYD/LM2HD, so it's not impossible.

@PikminMarioKirby From the bits I've been keeping up with, allegedly the leak going on contains a complete build of PLZA. Not a finished one mind you, but a build of the game that's apparently playable in some form or fashion. Going to be interesting to see if that's real, or what that will end up being like.

@VoidofLight Oh wow I haven't heard about a potential early build of Z-A, that'd be huge if true. We barely know anything about Z-A at this point, that would certainly give a lot of information about it.

Maybe Metroid connects everything? We've got Prime 2's 20th anniversary coming up on November 15th and if Nintendo were to release Prime 2 Remastered or Prime 2+3 HD for it but came to the conclusion from Pikmin 1+2 that digital shadow drop + physical months later doesn't work well, the game would need to be announced around next week. See for example how they announced Emio on July 17th for release on August 29th.

As for the NSO playtest, that would mean some kind of Metroid multiplayer.

• Prime 2's multiplayer as a standalone NSO bonus?
• Prime Hunters as a NSO bonus?
• Federation Force as a NSO bonus?
• Prime 4 has online multiplayer?

Supposedly that Pokémon leak also confirmed Z-A as being a cross-gen release, though take that with a grain of salt. The tweets were made private before I saw them myself. It is very interesting though, we've never had a Pokémon game release on multiple platforms before.

@Grumblevolcano

Prime Hunters in its Wii U Release was released WithOUT the Online, which was a total bummer for someone who loved playing it online, so i assume a Prime 2 Online / Hunters Online thing would be out of the Question, Locally i can imagine Prime 2 happen, but Hunters? I believe that would be too much effort to get working, even for Nintendo.

Also Prime 2 Multiplayer was kinda "Unbalanced" i remember fondly, that whenever i played that, every just waited for the Annihilator to spawn, and rushed for it, homing bullets are Kinda broken in a FPS.

Federation Force if they do a NSO on Switch 2? I could get behind that...

@Grumblevolcano interesting theory. This year is the 20th anniversary of Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door and Mario Vs Donkey Kong which both got remakes this year. I couldn't see Mario Party and Metroid Prime 2 port sales really hurting each other, so next week isn't impossible. I think that shadow-dropping a game at a Direct can work, but doing it as a standalone announcement might not work as well. Metroid Prime 2 could come to Switch, but that would be assuming that the playtest isn't about GameCube. I don't think the online playtest would be NSO including the DS/3DS games since those could be put on DS/3DS apps sometime in the future, and I don't think they'd need to test MP4's potential online play since they haven't really done that with a lot of games.

@Ulysses The main reason I don't see it being the 17th is because of Mario Party, but it's possible. I think they'll reveal this mysterious NSO feature before the playtest, because if they don't, I'm sure someone will.

Yeah I'm pretty sure the Game Freak leaks/hack are legit. There's a whole bunch of beta designs for older titles as far back as Diamond/Pearl getting posted all over the internet.

They’re legit, yeah. It also means that ZA has a playable build already- which means it’s probably slated for early 2025.