@rallydefault What official release schedule do you mean? The regional Nintendo websites are sometimes kind of inconsistent of how they advertise upcoming games.
Is your hypothesis that they temporarily removed it because they are expecting a release date to drop soon?
@rallydefault If you couldn't post links to Nintendo that would be pretty sad for a Nintendo news forum 😆 I think in general you can post links as long as they are relevant and not spam or self advertising.
Anyways, I rarely look at that particular page. Is it usually accurate and complete?
Edit: I can definitely imagine that page would be changed around the time of a direct although doing if a week early would be a bit of a fail.
My own view is. . . no, Zelda isn't an RPG series ( except for that one time, ahem ). However, it is basically the closest possible cousin of the RPG genre. If there's a border between "Action RPG" and "Action-Adventure", Zelda is basically right on the other side of that border from the Land of RPGs. Which makes a certain sense, since the Action-Adventure genre label kind of arose out of Zelda and its sensibility of "Lets remove as much of the RPG from an Action RPG as possible". In a lot of ways, the genre "Action Adventure" is kind of definitionally defined as "all the species of games descended from Legend of Zelda".
Or basically, given the near boundaries in question, its logical for Zelda to come up. Either because a person disagrees on the precisely placement of the genre border, or simply because its a close enough cousin to be of interest.
@metaphysician What are your feelings about Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment? it has variable party members wirh different skills, it has exp and leveling, it is fairly story-driven. I think of that one as an RPG but Nintendo just says 'action' along with the tag 'raise your stats'
It's usually accurate. I mean, it's as official as it comes.
I would actually lean towards the game needing more time if it's left the chart, which is disheartening, obviously.
We'll get an update within 2 ish weeks since the financial report always gives release windows for all announced Nintendo games. But it would be weird to edit that on the webpage 2 weeks early. Makes me wonder if Nintendo Today is about to say something.
@metaphysician What are your feelings about Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment? it has variable party members wirh different skills, it has exp and leveling, it is fairly story-driven. I think of that one as an RPG but Nintendo just says 'action' along with the tag 'raise your stats'
Tough to say, particularly since I don't really play musou games. It sounds like at least some musou games ( like Hyrule Warriors ) probably should be considered RPGs, albeit their own unique branch of the genre. OTOH, I could see the argument that the musou genre more broadly evolved as a style of action game, and that outlier titles don't add enough RPG aspects to jump the border. There might be a marketing angle as well, where the people who buy musou games ( even story-heavy fan service musou games ), don't buy them for the same reasons as people buy RPGs- thus the marketers not wanting to overemphasize any RPGness.
@rallydefault@FishyS If they wanted to avoid doing a general Direct in January/February, sprinkling release date trailers over the next 2 weeks would be an effective strategy. One for Fortune’s Weave, one for Splatoon Raiders + Splatoon 3 11.0.0 update, one for whichever of Yoshi/Wonder comes first (the other perhaps saved for the annual MAR10 Day video).
@FishyS
Definitely a possibility, but why remove it like that altogether? Why not just let it stay at TBD or 2026 like Raiders, and then just update it once they say something else? Seems very weird to remove it and literally extra work.
@Grumblevolcano
My thoughts on that strategy are: not a great strategy lol
Well, I guess I would ask the question: Why would they not do an actual Direct before the Spring? One of the logical answers would be: They don't have enough to fill a Direct. And that would be a worrying thought.
@rallydefault If Pokemon Champions, Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, SMB Wonder Switch 2 Edition, Tomodachi Life Living the Dream, Fire Emblem Fortune’s Weave, Rhythm Heaven Groove and Splatoon Raiders are all Spring/Summer games there’s barely any room for new 1st party game announcements for Spring/Summer.
In the past that kind of setup resulted in a Partner Showcase happening instead.
@Grumblevolcano Yeah, I feel like the only spaces we really have free right now is the Fall/Winter- and we already know one of the fall titles. Pokemon Gen 10. So this leaves us with needing a game for September, October, and December if Pokemon is filling it's normal November slot.
"It is fate. Many have tried, yet none have ever managed to escape it's flow."
It’s a great lineup for people like us… but there are a lot of B and C-tier games in there if we’re being honest.
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The Splatoon spinoff may or may not end up being a big game, but we have two medium-big games in February and March — Mario Tennis (the best selling mario sports subseries) and Pokémon Pokopia. So I could imagine April and May having the smaller games. And Fire Emblem (whenever it comes) is not too small.
I feel like the question is if they are planning to have some big surprise game for the Switch 2 anniversary or if they plan to just drown the early adopters in medium games for the summer and leave the truly big hitters for Fall. Although there is a good chance we will learn about one of the Fall big hitters on Pokemon day.
Yeah the February Direct typically focuses on their titles launching in Spring and Summer, usually through July or so, with September being the latest (Link's Awakening in 2019) outside of the Smash tease in 2018.
With the games @Grumblevolcano listed, as well as The Duskbloods (iirc, Nintendo is publishing this?), I'd reckon there's really only room for 1, maybe 2 unannounced 1st party games for that time frame. The bulk of the unannounced games will be in Oct/Nov/Dec, one of which will be Pokemon Gen 10.
They could reveal one of those games early, but Nintendo is more likely to save those for a June Direct imo.
I was also thinking the first week after Mario Tennis but I was reminded that the Virtual Boy NSO library launches then. That's on a Tuesday though so perhaps we could see a Direct air on the 18-19th?
Didn't we play this game with the Switch 2 reveal endlessly only for them to drop the trailer on the day DKCR HD released? I would have thought we'd have learnt our lesson, I guess not
A February Direct seems likely. I'll say now what I said last year, they're always going to want to have something to say to investors before their AGM. There'll be something before March to kick off the year
@IceClimbers I feel like the Duskbloods probably won't disrupt any plans Nintendo has first-party wise. Even though it is an exclusive game for the console, it is a FromSoft game.
"It is fate. Many have tried, yet none have ever managed to escape it's flow."
@skywake We did although that was quite a unique situation in hindsight. Plus it was quite sneaky as it didn't disrupt DKCR HD's marketing cycle and yet ended up putting more eyes on Donkey Kong for other reasons (that design change was quite a shock at the time!)
You'd be hard pressed to find a Direct that drops in the same week as a first-party release, the Virtual Boy stuff I'm less hung up on especially as it's earlier in the week.
@FishyS
Well that's pretty much what I'm saying: 2 games with mass appeal, Mario Tennis Fever and Pokopia. (I wish I could put Yoshi in here, and I'm excited for the game, but most of us can admit that what they're doing with Yoshi lately is... not great.)
Everything else is niche. Tomodachi life (spelling?) - I know people love that game and it sold impressively, but it's far from mainstream in franchise recognition. I've never played one of those games, and I'm a pretty avid gamer. Rhythm Heaven is also niche in name and in sales - barely cracked a million?
Raiders is at least summer, in my estimation, and Fire Emblem is nowhere to be seen on the official release schedule.
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Topic: Next Nintendo Direct?
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