@Grumblevolcano I can't see us getting anything 2D Zelda wise. Echoes of Wisdom just came out not too long ago, and unless they're reusing all the assets and Link's Awakening's Art style for a third time I doubt we'll see one this soon. I do hope though that the next 2D Zelda is an original title and either explores outside of Hyrule, or makes a new map for Hyrule that isn't just adding to or reusing the A Link to the Past map.

As for my predictions:

I'm on the fence about Xenoblade Genesis being here. I want to believe it could be, mainly because the first trailer didn't give us much to chew on regarding the game itself or the characters (unlike 3, where after the first trailer we at least got more information on characters and the world of the game). However it does seem like it's something they'd want to wait on until around February or Spring of next year. Especially if it won't be coming out until late Summer or early Fall.

I think that with the Zelda Direct Ocarina of Time and the Zelda movie are a given, due to how Ocarina is due to release later this year and the Zelda movie is releasing next year. I don't know if they'll dedicate the entirety of the 30 minutes to those two projects though. I can't see them making a new 2D game any time soon, and part of me wants to say we probably won't get DLC for Age of Imprisonment, seeing as Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes didn't get DLC either. Unless there's a new Zelda spin-off that isn't Hyrule Warriors related (which I doubt given that Tingle's Rosy Rupee Land is something I don't see Nintendo revisiting), we'll probably just end up getting a Tears of the Kingdom style teaser for the next big 3D game. Although I'm also of two minds about that as well, given that I can see it happening- but at the same time we're still far out from the next game's release, and I doubt Nintendo wants to reveal a new game years before it comes out given how Metroid Prime 4 and Tears of the Kingdom were handled.

I think as for what's likely to happen in the general direct- Fire Emblem DLC is a given. I don't think it will be the opener though, given that usually in recent years that's either been a deeper dive into a game (like how they handled Rhythm Heaven Groove), or it's been an entirely new reveal. Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave already had a direct, so I feel like it would be sandwiched between reveals. Especially since I doubt they're going to reveal any of the DLC content and will probably just put a small teaser with the DLC pass announced at the very end of it.

I could see Luigi's Mansion 4 being a thing. It would fill the niche of a 3D Mario game, especially since we probably aren't getting a new 3D Mario for a while. DK Bananza seems to be the entire staff that worked on Odyssey- and unless Bananza's development wrapped up ages ago, or they have another internal team working on the next 3D Mario it's probably a bit further off than we think.

Pokopia DLC is likely. I don't think we'll see anything on Winds and Waves until February 27th 2027 though.

Yea, everyone was a day off in a calendar of 365 days. Terrible.

Seriously lol some of you guys really are sticks in the mud. These Youtubers/leakers/whatever make a lot of sensationalist content for most of the year, but if you don't attend to it like it's some sort of religion and just keep your ear lightly to the ground, it's pretty easy to discern when something is actually going to happen. And being a day off in either direction or whatever is pretty darn good, I'd say.

I honestly don't have a ton of specific thoughts.... I'll just throw some stuff out there.

• OoT overview (duh)
• Zelda special editions
• Zelda movie something
• MarioKart World new KT routes
• Splatoon Raiders DLC (?)
• Metroid Ravenous
• FE:FW and NSSR reminders
• Kirby something (I dont know much about the series lol)
• Duskbloods info
• E33 port
• Marvel Rivals port
• One last thing will be Kid Ovaries sorry, Icarus: Uprising ^{pleasepleasepleaseplease lease}

@VoidofLight My idea for ALBW HD is a Switch 1 HD port similar to what Tantalus did for LM2 in 2024 and Forever Entertainment did for DKC Returns in 2025 (perhaps done by one of those studios). As for Oracle remakes, I was thinking that they'd be given the Link's Awakening remake treatment done by Grezzo.

I'm not really sure what else could play the role of the 2027 Zelda game unless that WWHD/TPHD double pack Switch 1 rumour turned out to be real and Nintendo's just held onto it for 4-5 years but I doubt that.

@Grumblevolcano I honestly think we could probably see ALBW get a remaster. I don't think I would mind that personally, given its one of the greatest 2D games in the series. The only way I could see Oracle getting remakes is if they reuse the same art style for Echoes of Wisdom and Link's Awakening, especially given that Echoes of Wisdom has a lot of enemy assets they could pull from.

Also unrelated to the Zelda topic, but we're apparently fast approaching the largest gap between entries in the Animal Crossing series. Animal Crossing New Leaf to New Horizons was a seven year wait. Animal Crossing New Horizons has been out for six whole years now, and it'll be seven in 2027. I'm partially wondering if there's a possibility we see the next game relatively soon. However at the same time, I wouldn't be surprised if we don't. The Switch 2 edition just came out this year, and they did the whole 3.0 update. I don't know if that's meant to count as the "next" Animal Crossing game, or if that's just being done to hold people over while they wait.

I've been walking back a lot of my previous statements because I don't want to come off as as intolerant/entitled anymore, but 3D Mario is one where I'm going to remain adamant on. I do not see 3D Mario being significantly later and the only thing that will convince me otherwise is if we wait several years and it simply doesn't materialize. There's a reason why Mario has always been an early system seller, Mario is their flagship IP so having it early is an easy way to signal a new era with a big game. I cannot see them passing this up for any reason other than a delay.

A lot of people point to Bananza as a 3D Mario replacement. Look, I like Bananza, it's a good game in its own right, but it's no 3D Mario. And considering that there's 25 million people that bought Odyssey and not Bananza, I think there's a majority of fans that feel the same. I suspect there's people actually working at Nintendo that do too, so I don't see this narrative where they feel Bananza "replaces" 3D Mario as accurate. They clearly wanted to try something new and different, but again I don't think they would've done this at the expense of 3D Mario. I think they had some contingent of developers set aside to work on a 3D Mario. Where that contingent comes from IDK, but I do not believe in the slightest that they threw all of their resources into Bananza and had nothing planned for 3D Mario early. It's almost entirely unprecedented (the only other example where they didn't was on the GBA which had no new, original mainline Mario game) and there's business logic behind the pattern.

Now as to whether or not it'll show up in this Direct? I'm not 100% because we've been in this situation for a while. But between the precedent of 3D Mario being early and the Nate the Hate rumor of it being 2027, I feel like the reveal shouldn't be too far away. I'm 99% sure we're seeing it revealed either here or February, and since this Direct is looking like it's set up to be a big one, now would be a good time.

@rallydefault I don't attend to it like it's a religion. I find it funny people obsessed over when it's happening and getting it right when....it doesn't matter? It happens when it happens, y'know? All the talk of patterns and traditions and history when it happens when it happens because the powers that be decreed it thusly.

Never expect anything: if it happens, it's a pleasant surprise, if it doesn't, then you won't be disappointed. That's what I learned anyway, mostly working under a very mismanaged company for 8 years.

@Bolt_Strike To be fair, Sony just did 90 minutes of State of Play that landed like a wet flannel. 75 minutes of Nintendo Direct could be just as awful.

look, i get not every single odyssey team member worked on bananza, but the vast majority did. what skeleton team do you think they had that would let them announce a 3d mario any time soon? do you think they started in 2020 or some bs?

i feel like you're just trying to find literally any possible angle to pretend 3d mario is still anywhere close while still using the typical 3d mario team (the real failure point tbh).

@rallydefault okay rally chill out, it's a nothingburger post. i get people who follow grifter channels are usually annoying, but you're kinda going off on nothing right now

@VoidofLight begging Nintendo not to go that route. The toybox aesthetic ain't bad, but I am very much over it. If we get Oracle remakes (Which I am in favor of! I have yet to try Seasons, but Ages is great!), I want literally anything else.

@squiddu-real I do in fact think they started in 2021 after Bowser's Fury. Again I see no possible way they don't have someone working on Mario at all times. As for who? Well that's the million dollar question. It is possible it's not the usual 3D Mario team. It's also possible that they expanded and added new devs. It's probably going to be some combination of veterans who understand Mario and new blood brought in to let the rest of the team work on Bananza. I see possibilities like those as more likely than letting 3D Mario gather cobwebs from 2021-2025. 3D Mario is too huge to not have someone working on it at all times.

Please no. I already had an infamous crashout over the June Direct. IDK if I can take another one. I am utterly terrified of history repeating itself.

And no, I'm not going to expect nothing. If you constantly expect to be disappointed that's bad for your mental health. It's perfectly normal to experience different emotions in different circumstances. This isn't the way I'm going to adjust my behavior. I'm going to try the harder, but much more rewarding, path of learning to handle disappointment without being intolerant/entitled.

@CaleBoi25 I'm kind of tired of the aesthetic as well, so I don't really want another new game reusing that style or those assets. The issue is just that Echoes of Wisdom came out too soon for them to have a new 2D Zelda in the works. At least unless they have other studios making them outside of Grezzo.

We'd all like to think that Nintendo has some grand strategy that involves dropping major releases in their most successful franchises at just the right time to push hardware sales along.

However, the reality of software development just doesn't work like that. I've no doubt that they prototyped a bunch of 3D Mario games, and had a good hard look at the possibilities for them, but decided to go with Bananza instead, because that was more promising.

That does mean a bit of a gap for the 3D Mario series, but it's not like there aren't plenty of other things propping up Mario as a brand, so it's not like it'll vanish from the public consciousness. I'd also think that we got the remastered Galaxy games as a bit of a placeholder. Maybe they'll surprise us, but giving it a couple of years at least seems more likely.

@Bolt_Strike I don't expect disappointment, I expect nothing. The key difference there is the apathy.

Funny you mention that it's not good for mental health, this is good for mine, because otherwise I expect the worst at every possible moment about everything, perks of the MADD I got diagnosed with many years back. I'd rather not expect anything and just take stuff for what it is as it happens.

@Matt_Barber I do think that Nintendo does a bit of both, given how they've been known to hold onto games for months or years after development is completed just to release them in order to fill gaps in their calendar. We know that Xenoblade Chronicles 3 was finished a good few months before it released, given that they were able to swap release dates with Splatoon 3 when that game needed more time and polish.

That being said, the rumors about DK Bananza were around for a year or two before the game was revealed. I don't think that would have given the team enough time to finish the game and move onto a new 3D Mario. Of course, development environments are also not linear- and teams can work on two games at the same time. Monolithsoft has done that before with how they handled Xenoblade 3's development and Xenoblade Definitive Edition at the same exact time. However in this case, one of the two projects was a remake/remaster and not a brand new game.

Ultimately I think that we probably won't see a new 3D Mario for a while. DK Bananza probably started with an idea for a new 3D Mario and eventually evolved into a 3D DK game over the course of development.

Again I would question that because Mario is more profitable than Bananza and Odyssey has sold literally 6 times as much as Bananza (and yes, Bananza's still out there and has an opportunity to sell, but the sales have fallen off after the first few months so it seems like the game's come pretty close to its saturation point and is going to remain around the 5 million mark). And creatively, we have a prototype that was good enough to be included as a side mode in the 3D World port, so I don't really see the logic of thinking Bananza is more promising. I can buy that the team was more personality interested in Bananza, that might be understandable if they were getting sick of working on 3D Mario, but then I would suspect Nintendo would want to find someone else to work on 3D Mario in order to grant that request (and it's not like they couldn't find any takers, it's Mario so surely there's a lot of developers that would be interested in working on them). Honestly, if they did approach this the way you describe that feels like an absolute misfire. Not to say that Bananza isn't a good game, in fact I think it deserves more success than it's gotten, but it feels more like what Luigi's Mansion 1 was for the GC. It was a nice new concept that served as something new to tide people over Year 1, but it's not something a lot of people seem to truly view as a flagship sort of game. We need the Sunshine to Bananza's LM1 (except yunno... hopefully something better received by Sunshine). If this really was an either-or situation between Bananza and 3D Mario, we can say with relative certainty that Bananza was the wrong choice (or at least from a financial perspective, as other metrics are more subjective). I would certainly much rather they have swapped Bananza with where you think 3D Mario is landing than have Bananza early and 3D Mario late, the opposite scenario would likely be better off for them.

I am so sorry to hear about your diagnosis, but is it possible for you to just... not expect the worst? Genuine question because IDK your thought process and I'm not trying to offend here, but I don't understand the leap in logic of "I HAVE to expect the worst case scenario for my mental health". I do see some exciting possibilities out there and I don't think it is healthy to constantly be negative and think they're all not going to happen. There's something to be said for keeping your expectations in check, but this seems like the opposite extreme.

@Bolt_Strike That's the thing I've said multiple times: I DONT expect the worst. I expect nothing. No expectations means no disappointment. Take everything as it comes.

Because my mental state before my diagnosis was effectively paralysis from only expecting the worst, that everything I did was wrong and awful, and that was no way to live my life, and medication doesn't really help because if I treat my depression, I end up a nervous wreck from anxiety, and if I treat the anxiety, I end up miserable.

So I expect nothing. It is a Nintendo Direct that will happen and games will be shown. Will it be good? Maybe. Will it be bad? Just as likely. Does it matter? No not really. It'll happen and I'll move on, play some games, go to work tomorrow, the usual.

I realise this must sound insane (And it probably is) but having this level of indifference to everything is something I adapted to 10 years ago, and it's kept me going. That's not saying things don't excite me (They do) or disappoint me (They do), but before something concludes, I don't have any expectations other than "It's a thing happening".

Which, also thinking about it, is probably why I don't have strong opinions on Directs in general, or many games.

Like, if they announce a new Metroid game, I'll be bouncing off the walls for a bit because that's exciting to me, but then it'll pass and I'll reserve judgement for later trailers/the game itself.

Like as a huge Mega Man fan, Dual Override being announced was met with "Neat." The recent trailer was exciting, and I hope the game is good, because it looks interesting. But I have no expectations for it, because I haven't got a controller in my hands experiencing it, and Mega Man historically is a mixed bag.

With hindsight, I'll have an opinion on it, same with this Direct, and many other things, but going into it, all I can bring myself to think is that it is indeed a thing that is happening and I look forward to trying it out for myself.

@Haruki_NLI I see. I'm sorry you have to deal with that. I suppose then what I'm saying really doesn't work for you, but I think that is the way to go for the average person.

@Bolt_Strike Sure, it'd be a bad choice if it was all about the money. Still, making games is also a creative endeavor and there's a balance to be struck, so if you've got something that's good enough to win awards, sell well enough to break even, and be that game that constantly comes up in discussions of games that are exclusive to the Switch 2, it's not necessarily a bad outcome.

Taken to the extreme, extracting the maximum amount of money from a video game is what puts me off the likes of Electronic Arts, Activison, Ubisoft, etc. because they all tend to soulless experiences that are constantly hitting you up for microtransactions that gate off key parts of the experience.

Nintendo might not sit at the opposite end of that scale, but they're at least something of a happy medium.

This is pretty close to what my predictions are. Although I think I'd swap Kid Icarus with a 3D Mario reveal. Personally, though, I'd love to see an Uprising port/remaster, especially since I never got around to playing it on 3DS. Just don't think the chances are too high for it, unfortunately 🥲

Considering how I both don't have Switch 2 quite yet and when I do get it I will touch nothing but known games (and except maybe OOT remake, released games) until next year, I don't have too strong feelings on a new Direct but for things I'd want that have any chance of happening:

1. OOT remake being interesting and not entirely safe (as in neither the exact same game nor adding BOTW elements in half-baked, boring ways)
2. That rumored Wario Land being here and with a neat 2D art style ala the Wii game.
3. Any additional promotion for Muramasa, one of the best Wii games that deserves better sales than it got in the Wii
4. More info on the new Castlevania and Megaman games
5. Any focus on Unbeatable, an indie game I've been deeply interested in getting and got seemingly, quietly announced for Switch 2
6. Alien Isolation 2 update
7. Maybe that new Metroid, Wario Land AND 2D Metroid in one Direct when I don't think they have a lot of big 3D games to announce would surprise me tho.
8. Maybe Luigi's Mansion 4, tbh, I'm indifferent to most new announcements while I don't even have any of the day 1 games played yet, even though I love all three Luigi's Mansion games (yes even 2, the multiplayer was possible to beat with randos in that one)

Sadly I've given up hope for Wind Waker/Twilight Princess HD. Tbh, it'll probably happen in like 5 years when any sane person would've given up, same way they announced a new Pokemon Snap only after they were done with the systems that would've fit to do camera gimmicks with.

Tbh, I'd be a little happy if any of the games I'm interested in that's not yet announced for Switch 2 to not come out this year, since there's basically no chance I'll get to them.