Topic: Next Nintendo Direct?

Where's the Direct?

The Direct is....
Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Select Start

I used to work for a company who were big on hiring ex-services officers. They once shortlisted a man who claimed to be ex-SAS. So they rang up to check references and got told “we can neither confirm nor deny that man ever worked for us”.

Naturally they took this as proof he’d worked there and gave him the job...

...and it later turned out he’d completely lied. He admitted it after he’d handed in his notice.

...

The moral of the story: 1 + 1 does not necessarily equal 42.

@StuTwo

I don't think anyone's just taking the word of randomers on the internet. I think people are basing it on the fact that some of these people have correctly predicted things before.

One of those 2, I think it was Zippo, did specifically say Feb 20th for Animal Crossing.

Where’s the direct.

Barry said it was today.

Where's the Direct?

You all are joking, but literally in the announcement for the AC Direct, I saw people complaining. Complaining about the lack of Smash information of all things. We had a Smash Direct last month, for crying out loud! Us Animal Crossing fans waited like eight months for any significant new info on the game (since the September Direct didn't show much new).

The Direct is Somewhere Over the Rainbow 🌈

@Octane I’m predicting part of the Direct will focus on Miyamoto sitting getting everyone excited about a new Pikmin game only to then laugh hysterically as he tears up all the documents and destroys the only computer with files for the first three games and the yet to release forth game and then just releases Hey Pikmin on the Switch without any resolution or graphical changes just to really rub salt into the wound

Given how impressive the Dreams creations are getting, I wonder when someone will create a Direct using Dreams.

@Grumblevolcano It will be the Direct to end all Directs!

@Dezzy The thing is though that there are literally tens of thousands of "commentators" on the internet making predictions all of the time. There are only 365 days in the year - if every completely uninformed commentator picks one at random and says "there'll be a direct on this date" then a fair number of them will pick the right day just by chance.

A commentator who has some intuition - not insider knowledge, just a vague idea of how the industry works - can easily focus down a particular topic to a much smaller set of days than 365. We all "knew" there would be a Animal Crossing direct before the release. We all "knew" that it would be on a weekday. We all "knew" it would be within 2 months of the release (and more than 2 weeks before). We also know that the distribution of directs within a week are skewed towards the middle of the week and rarely on a Monday or Friday.

The odds of someone guessing the right day are actually quite high.

It's like the famous story about how to become a successful business consultant: send 100 letters to CEO's telling them you've analysed the industry and they will fail to beat the average results in that industry over the next quarter. Half of them will. You then send 50 letters to the CEO's who you'd correctly predicted results last time and tell them the same again. Half of your predictions will be correct. You then send 25 letters to those CEO's and so on. Eventually you end up with a small number of CEO's who think you basically have super powers and can cash in.

None of which is to say that these particular commentators don't have insider contacts or information (they may well do so) but we don't know it.

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Just as an aside - last year I correctly predicted on this forum the content of a Nintendo Direct being the reveal of a Bravely Default sequel. It was just an educated guess but had I been on Twitter (and been an amoral idiot) I could have built up a group of followers on the back of that.

Another educated guess would be that there will be a decent sized indie Direct with several timed-exclusive indie games revealed (and also a good look at both Hollow Knight Silksong and Sports Story) next Wednesday (26th).

I think a full fat direct is waiting until Sony or Microsoft decides to end their Mexican stand off on releasing more information about PS5 / XBox series X - specifically games and prices. Honestly I think Sony is terrified of going first because Microsoft has resolved to significantly undercut them on whatever price they announce. Microsoft isn't stupid - they saw what Sony did from a marketing perspective last time around (and what they have done in the past - the way they castrated the Saturn with a simple price announcement for instance), they'll wait. They have no reason to go first.

Nintendo doesn't need to talk about autumn and Christmas until they know what Sony and Microsoft are releasing so I don't think they will. The current default in a quiet market (Switch selling the most and perennial Switch favourites like Smash, Mario Kart and BoTW filling the best sellers charts) suits them perfectly. It might be that we don't know what their big Christmas anchor is until E3.

They could even keep (say) a Mario 3D World port under wraps until September to help them control the narrative if Sony are still being cagey about their launch line up at the end of May. The worst thing Nintendo can do is put all of their cards on the table and then Sony announce an absolutely killer launch line up for the PS5. You're not only old news then but also compared unfavourably.

The flip side is that Sony don't want to announce an underwhelming launch line up and price and then have Microsoft announce "oh our new studios have half a dozen gorgeous RPGs and FPSs ready for launch day and our box is £100 cheaper" and Nintendo then announce "oh BoTW2, Bayonetta 3 and Metroid Prime 4 are all November 2020 and Switch Lite is now just £100". It's so cagey and I don't see how Sony wins this one. They look a bit snookered to me.

But then they've always been the best company out there marketing consumer electronics (aside from Apple) and that's not random chance - they know what they're doing and they'll do it well as they almost always have in the past.

Directception.

@StuTwo Just wait, now that I got the AC direct date correct, once we have an April 1st general direct I too shall become internet famous.

But yeah, all companies being silent is so weird for a console launch year, even if you highlighted why it's happening.

@link3710 Nintendo was silent on the Switch until four months or so before the release, and that was only a trailer with little information, and it worked. I don't understand the idea that Microsoft and Sony need to reveal everything now. The industry moves so fast these days. An April or May reveal would be fine as well. Preferably before E3, so third parties can announce stuff for the consoles, but other than that, there's no reason to.

Though with COVID-19, it's hard to say if they'll even make it this year. So many tech companies cancelled meetings and events. It doesn't make predictions easier...

@Octane While they were silent on the system itself until around 4 months before launch, the main launch game (BotW) was promoted a huge amount 9 months before launch. Things are rather different for Sony and Microsoft, Halo Infinite is a BotW type situation but Microsoft's seemingly staying silent about that until E3 2020 and on the Sony front the big 1st party launch titles are probably PS5 exclusive.

So unless coronavirus is delaying the consoles to 2021, news needs to coming soon.

It made sense for Xbox to come out the gate first since they want to get fans of the brand excited for something. They did some pretty cool reveals at the last Microsoft event/game awards, so the message is “be there in late 2020 and 2021 because now we have games for you”. Most of 2020 is a dry year for them.

Sony is going to have another big year with PS4 and there is no reason to have platform holders looking too far in the future. Everybody already knows about the PS5 anyway.

Where's the Direct?

@Octane By the initial launch trailer (October 2016) 6 months before launch we already had a ton of information. The play anywhere idea had already been established as the main selling point, and we knew a new 3D Mario, Breath of the Wild, Skyrim, Mario Kart 8, NBA 2K, and Splatoon 2 were coming early on in the system's life. In other words, we knew a ton of flagship system selling items from Nintendo, and had confirmation of two companies that usually ignored Nintendo were on-board.

So while we aren't quite 6 months out yet... (maybe?), I'd expect that they need to at least get some sort of 'this is why you should buy this system' point out by then.

Guys, this is the job of a man called Bowser.We haven't seen a real Nintendo Direct since he arrived.What do we expect from someone with a last name of Bowser?Really.