Topic: Next Nintendo Direct?

@OmnitronVariant the demo was great. I initially had no interest in this game but the demo has really sold me in it - it’s just intriguing and feels great to play.

Also agree that the Monster Hunter Stories performance is disappointing. Hopefully not representative of the final product.

@Haruki_NLI If the Wii ever got a game day and date with another platform it'd be the PS2 or the PSP.

I'm a little overwhelmed, to be honest.

I didn’t mind the Direct. Am glad I watched in spite of not feeling any wow factor.

One of the big takeaways to me from this showcase is how wide Nintendo’s reach is for variety and content from partners. Ending with Todd Howard and the Bethesda games was actually quite smart. It may not have been what a lot of fans wanted, but it made for excellent marketing to indicate that some of their biggest projects will be playable on handheld and with a commitment to continue adding on their catalogue in the future. This is huge for a lot of other fans, and illustrates that Nintendo is trying to be even bigger than we might have suspected going into this gen. The third party support so far is bonkers, and we’re not even a full year in. So no, not exciting for many of us (Duskbloods? E33? RDR2?), but they know what they’re doing and it’s pretty compelling. I think the next Direct will be the one that satiates that gap some of us are feeling.

One game that I thought was oddly absent was South of Midnight, which is supposed to be coming in Spring. Thought we would have seen a release date here.

That being said, it's coming to PS5 at the same time, so maybe we'll see a date at the rumored State of Play?

The Direct was fine imo. While I wish they didn't have such a lame closeout with just dumping a ton of Bethesda ports, I had been complaining about the over reliance on anime games/JRPGs for a while, and while this still had that, the Bethesda games at felt like they at least addressed those complaints. There were some games I was hoping to see that didn't show up unfortunately(Konami was present but no MGS or Silent Hill, Bethesda but no DOOM, No Gears or Halo from MS), I did like some of what did show up(FF VII Rebirth, RE9, Pragmata, Orbitals, Indiana Jones, Digimon and Tales of Arise), might also get some of the smaller releases. Unfortunately not much in the way of new announcements, but otherwise I was whelmed. It's not a great partner showcase, but not bad enough to warrant some of the negative responses(Seriously? Worst ever? Are we gonna forget the time they had only 4 games and one was f***ing WWE Battlegrounds?). Some people really need to stop doing this to themselves

@Buizel I was wondering how Stories 3 would run, given that it seems to be using the same engine that Wilds has- and also has an Open World like Wilds. Pretty much got the gut feeling it's just going to be another situation like MH Wilds where it runs abysmal on all platforms. Haven't tried the demo yet- so I don't know for sure.

Also the Direct was kinda lame. Was expecting at least one new announcement of a game that hadn't been revealed yet- but nah. I just hope that the next general direct isn't too far away.

@OmnitronVariant
Using a hybrid system in one of its hybrid ways defeats the purpose for you?

Orbitals looks AWESOME, and I knew nothing of that game before this. Pragmata, too - definitely two pickups for me beyond the stuff I was already hoping for like Indiana Jones and Final Fantasy.

I’m still on the fence about Resident Evil. I’ve played some of the games, and I like the action combat, but I’m not a horror/gore kind of person, so I don’t know if I could really enjoy the whole thing.

@IceClimbers I think it'll be Starfield in the rumoured State of Play meanwhile South of Midnight either appears in the next Direct or is a random standalone trailer.

I'm hearing rumors of a Direct on the 17th, has anyone else heard that? Do we have a source or is it just vibes lol?

@CaleBoi25 Probably vibes and wishful thinking because people want to believe that the Partner direct wasn't all that we're getting for the next few months. I personally wanna see if those Xenoblade Chronicles 4 leaks are actually real- but I doubt that we're getting a general direct anytime soon.

@CaleBoi25 There have been some rumors from relatively credible sources saying potentially a Direct in March, but nothing that really feels like a lock. So there's some rumblings about a General to follow but it's hard to say for sure.

Personally I'll believe it when I see it, most of this generation has been pure disappointment so far and it feels like they have next to nothing when they need to go big. I'd love to be proven wrong on this, but I've been burned too many times to believe anything before I see it from Nintendo. So I'm assuming next General isn't until June or even September until Nintendo says otherwise.

@VoidofLight That may be part of it, both fans and investors are starving for those big megaton games right now and Nintendo's largely been giving us crumbs for the last 6 months or so. Everyone's just desperate for a big announcement right now, so anyone that predicts a General or a big game announcement is sure to get clout right now (I have seen several claims of 3D Mario for example, it's possible we may indeed get it but also people are very upset and confused that we didn't get one last year so everyone wants to know when this is happening).

We're almost certainly getting Gen 10 Pokemon this year, so that's something, but I think we really need a megaton beyond that and I fear Nintendo might think that's enough sadly. The good news there is that Furukawa acknowledged the issue, admitted that the Switch 2 is underperforming in the West, and said Year 2 and 3 are very important, but that still doesn't point to big games coming soon so IDK if they will (or even can) do anything to turn things around in the near future other than what's already set in stone.

One of the regular leakers claimed there would be a general this month also, but not the most reliable of ones.

Note that next week is Mario Tennis and the end of the month is Pokemon Presents, so the 17th is in the semi empty week. I could imagine an indie or something, but I don't see how a general would make sense so soon after the last direct.

@CaleBoi25 It seems that the theory is mostly based around an update to the "Mario and Wario" patent occurring on February 17 and a similar update to the "Rhythm Heaven Groove" patent on the 24th. Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like pretty weak grounds for there being a Direct. It's a pretty busy day as well, between the launch of Virtual Boy NSO and the Lunar New Year. TBH, all this talk going around of a "real direct" coming soon feels like the Nintendo fandom is experiencing its own form of "Conformity Gate".

At the very earliest, I could see a General Direct in Late March, though April or June seem more likely to me.

@CaleBoi25 I think if they do a Direct that week, it'll be another game specific one like Tomodachi Life. Fire Emblem and Rhythm Heaven feels like the most likely candidates, former would mean Nintendo manages to release it before the big summer of RPGs begins (Rebirth on June 3rd is the start of the summer of RPGs) meanwhile latter would continue the trend set in January of Switch 1 news being outside of general Directs.

@UpsideDownRowlet

it's extremely weak, actually. post is from a splatoon raiders example but the same thing happened with those other patents.

I'm pretty plugged into the rumor mill, and I haven't heard anything credible.

I'm sticking with my initial theory (not the one I LIKED, though lol): Nintendo is pretty comfortable with what they have for the next couple months. Maybe we'll get some game-specific smaller stuff, but I don't think we're looking at a 1st-party Direct until the Spring. Like, super late March or later.

@Bolt_Strike It honestly wouldn't surprise me if many of their big tentpole franchises aren't even close to having their next games done, so Nintendo just has nothing big to announce. They probably believed that the Switch 2 would sell better in the West due to it's branding and Mario Kart World. Seems like a lot of people are waiting to grab a Switch 2 when exclusive titles like the next 3D Mario or next Xenoblade gets announced though.

@VoidofLight IDK about that. Mario's long absence seems to imply that they were working on something for next gen (and no, I do not think it was just Bananza, Mario is too huge a franchise to skip and many of the senior Mario developers are unaccounted for). Smash 6, Luigi's Mansion 4, and the next major Animal Crossing have also gone 5 or more years since their last release so they feel due (although ACNH S2E and Kirby Air Riders have thrown monkey wrenches in some of those), I think those 4 are specifically the ones that people are waiting for before they get a Switch 2. There is (or at least it feels like there is) a lack of tentpoles since COVID and people are getting fed up at this point. I think Nintendo may have overestimated how good their lineup would be and they may have learned the wrong lesson from the Switch. They saw how well their Wii U ports were selling and thought they could repeat the same strategy with S2Es but that may just be a flash in the pan to some degree and even with some of the Wii U ports doing well, the new, original games in those tentpole IPs generally outsold the re-releases. And so far, the Switch 2 doesn't have many games of that caliber (mainly just Mario Kart World, Bananza arguably could but it's not doing quite well enough to reach that level yet I don't think). Based on how the Switch games performed, most likely the best sellers on Switch 2 by the end of the generation will be MKW, maybe Bananza, the new 3D Mario, the new 3D Zelda, Pokemon Gens 10 and 11, Smash 6, the new Animal Crossing, Luigi's Mansion 4, and Splatoon 4. And most of these games... simply haven't been announced yet. I think we may need about 3-5 games of this caliber before the narrative of "no games" and underperforming sales really changes.

@Bolt_Strike I honestly don't think Smash 6 is coming any time soon. Especially since Sakurai kinda made it seem like Smash Ultimate is probably his last Smash game for a good while (and there's not really anywhere he could take the series beyond Ultimate, since anything he does will be lesser than that game in terms of roster and stages).

3D Mario might be in development, but I feel like if it were ready- we would've seen that in the September Direct rather than Yoshi being the final announcement there. Animal Crossing is probably going to be a mid-gen game, given that Tomodachi Life Living the Dream fills it's niche (with it being a design sim and life sim).

I do think that the Switch 2 Editions are an attempt for Nintendo to pad out their schedule with "Wii U-like" re-releases of their older games.. but I don't know how well that's working out for them at the current. A lot of these Switch 2 editions are pretty lazy- being mainly just a frame-rate increase or resolution bump with no underlying work done to fix the technical constraints that the Switch 1 versions of these games had. On top of that, they offer content for a premium.. with that content not really being worth the asking price for it.

• Starcrossed World was fun, but it wasn't worth the asking price for it. The new content is rather minuscule at most.
• The Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom Switch 2 Editions are basically just you paying a premium for the ability to get a better FPS and higher resolution. Sure, it comes with a mobile app companion- but I doubt most people used it.. and the extra lore tidbits got uploaded to YouTube anyways (the only reason you'd even want to have the app). On top of this, you can still see visible issues with how the game renders it's shadows, as Nintendo didn't think of increasing render distance to match with the higher resolution of the Switch 2's handheld screen. So it ends up creating this screen tearing effect that makes the whole presentation look sloppy visually.
• Mario Party Jamboree + Jamboree TV is also a mess not worth the price they asked for it. Apparently at launch of this Switch 2 Edition, they pretty much left the base game untouched and Jamboree TV was the only thing supporting the new FPS and Resolution of the Switch 2. It had it's own version of the board game mode, along with small multiplayer mini-games that seemed like a fun one-and-done situation. The price is too high for what it offers, and it didn't even upgrade the bulk of the actual game. I can't remember if they patched it to fix that or not.
• Animal Crossing New Horizons Switch 2 Edition. This is the cheapest Switch 2 Edition because all it really does is add 12 player multiplayer, a resolution bump, and the Megaphone. Most of the actual content of the Switch 2 Edition was included in a free update (which was a good move). The issue I take with it is that you're paying $5.99 for something that still does the bare minimum. For multiplayer that no one's going to use (especially because there's nothing to do with 8 players, so why would you do stuff with 12?) along with no FPS increase (probably due to something relying on the FPS to work properly- but it creates this jarring feeling going back to it when so many Switch 2 editions bumped the games up to a solid 60FPS).

It just doesn't feel exciting to see Switch 2 Editions announced. At all. Like- I'm wanting updates that increase the performance of games from Switch 1, sure- but I don't get excited when I see those announced instead of new games. The only time I feel like I would be remotely excited in that regard is probably if Monolithsoft announced Switch 2 Editions for their games- or for Xenoblade 2 at least, since I know it'll probably be higher quality- or go above and beyond. I'd imagine Xenoblade 2 Switch 2 Edition would be more akin to Xenoblade 1 Definitive Edition or Xenoblade Chronicles X Definitive Edition- with side content added, or story content added.