Topic: Next Nintendo Direct?

@Snatcher
So, the mini Direct will be Offline?
(Thinking about skipping the part I don't want to see)

@Anti-Matter I think so, which just sucks, the hype that is reacting to it with other people, is gone, it sucks, know it’s just as if I’m watching any random YouTube trailer out there.

@Snatcher
I think it will be great for me.
I just only skipping the video to find the kiddie games part, skipping any uniteresting games and if I found nothing or very few games I like, I got the verdict and I can continue my daily activities.

@Anti-Matter In all fairness you were always able to do that as long as you waited after the stream was over.

@Buizel @Anti-Matter I just told you, I'm expecting more games that are broadly appealing, highly selling games. Look at this list and see where the first part IPs I mentioned as well as third parties in general stand in the Nintendo pecking order:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Nintendo_S...

Quantity-wise, the year is full, but quality-wise (and I'm defining "quality" in terms of sales, not in terms of subjective enjoyment of a game) the lineup is... pretty lacking and a lot of the IPs that populate the upper echelon of sales are largely missing from this lineup. Where's BotW2? Where's Mario Odyssey 2? Where's Mario Kart DLC? Hell, even the likes of Metroid Prime or the rumored DK game have a shot of outselling pretty much anything in this lineup not named Pokemon or Splatoon. The sales data pretty much proves that for the vast majority of Switch owners there's little that they would be interested in for this year, only small pockets of franchises that sell around 1-2 million. And yes that is niche because it's not even in the Top 25 in sales and the Top 10 have all sold 10+ million. Any one of those Top 10 IPs could sell individually what the likes of those niche IPs will probably sell combined, which is a pretty damning statement on how unsatisfying these games are in the grand scheme of things. Like, it's great for those individual fanbases that they're getting the attention, but it's very bad for Nintendo as a whole.

@Bolt_Strike But we are getting a new Pokemon, we already got Arceus Legends this year which sold 10+ million and we are getting Splatoon 3 (with Splatoon 2 also having sold more than 10 million). The new DLC maps have already been revealed just this year and at least one more wave will be released this year 100%. I know you said except Pokemon and Splatoon, but these are coming out this year and are gonna sell greatly. A Year where BotW 2 and Mario Odyssey 2 releases will most likely not exist and if it does, anyone can complain about other games again.
As far as i can see we have at least 3 great selling games this year. It's already far better than last year, just by looking at the potential sales numbers

@Bolt_Strike Oh no, how dare Nintendo try to diversify their already huge lineup of games. Mario Strikers!? The kids won't understand that! Advance Wars? Won't appeal to anyone ever. Xenoblade Chronicles 3? Ignore the limited editions selling out, who's gonna buy it? Bayonetta 3? Ok you got me there. Kirby--do I even have to explain that? Nintendo Switch Sports? WHERE'S BASEBALL!? Mario and Rabbids? One franchise that's the face of gaming, and another that's still somewhat popular; too niche. And third-party games? Nah, most of them are ass, nevermind the fact that most of them either aren't for me or are ports of games I already played, if it's not targeted towards ME, it SUCKS. All I want Nintendo needs to survive are sequels to games on the Switch that are either almost certainly in production and are just taking their time because game development is too slow, or leakers are lying to me.

At least we might have Donkey Kong.

@Bolt_Strike
Nintendo's lineup every year always consists of 2 or 3 mega-sellers plus a bunch of less successful titles thrown in-between.

@HotGoomba I'm not saying there's anything wrong with those games existing or trying to grow them into higher sellers, but having those dominate the year and having little to sell in terms of larger, higher selling IPs just doesn't seem like a good strategy. And growing them is going to take time and again probably will not happen on a late gen sequel. Later gen sequels tend to not outsell the first game (for example, Mario Galaxy vs. Mario Galaxy 2, Pokemon Diamond/Pearl vs. Black/White, or XY vs. Sun/Moon), there's been a pattern with that (and there's some logical reasons why this trend might occur, such as the console being more popular due to being newer when the original came out and less demand for the sequel when the original already gave them a current gen experience for that IP). Don't expect Splatoon 3 to outsell Splatoon 2. Don't expect SV to outsell SwSh. Don't expect Xenoblade Chronicles 3 to outsell Xenoblade Chronicles 2. And don't expect Sparks of Hope to outsell Kingdom Battle. That's why I feel comfortable predicting the sales for these games, because their IPs have an established sales history, and many of them even have an established sales history on the Switch, that makes it easier to estimate where they're going to land.

Now would I love for some of these IPs to grow and become higher sellers for Nintendo? Sure, that would make it more palatable for some of these franchises that I don't like to get attention. And some of these IPs do seem to be enjoying growth that would warrant more attention. Luigi's Mansion, Fire Emblem, and Metroid in particular have really enjoyed breakout success with their Switch games that could lead me to believe they could grow in further entries. I think Xenoblade also has a shot of getting there itself, but probably not until a future gen. But I don't see anything in this lineup that would be that kind of breakout game.

@Bolt_Strike
Highly selling games are mostly not appealing for me since I have very different interest in gaming.
Games like xenoblade, splatoon, botw, metroid, etc will not working on me.
But, games like My Little Pony, My Universe games, cartoonish games by OG Games, etc will working on me.
Talking about games quantity I can pick, even without best selling games, my games are mostly consist the unpopular games with at least more than 50 different titles.
I have registered some upcoming games from trailers I found and even without the highest selling games, I'm already content with just smaller or unpopular games.

I think Pokemon Legends Arceus, Switch Sports, Splatoon 3 and Pokemon Scarlet/Violet will be the 10+ million sellers this year.

@westman98 I did some research on this based on that Wikipedia link I provided and that's slightly off. First off, here are some comparisons between the total sales for each years (note that it's based on games which have sold 1+ million and it's lifetime, so it's not really accurate how much sales actually occurred that year, but it does give you a good idea of which high sellers released in what year):

2017- 126.88 million
2018- 79.97 million
2019- 86.27 million
2020- 73.12 million
2021- 58.16 million

I did some estimates, and 2022 should be around 54.04 million. Now that is a continual drop off which is to be expected as popularity constantly decreases over time, so in that metric the lineup should be good, but in terms of the number of big titles, let's look at that further. I'm going to define 2 tiers of "big" titles based on sales, the higher tier being games that have sold 10+ million and a middle tier of games that sold 3-10 million. Here are the results for that:

2017:
Top tier: 4 (BotW, MK8D, Splatoon 2, Mario Odyssey)
Mid tier: 2 (1-2 Switch and Minecraft)
Total: 6

2018:
Top tier: 3 (Super Mario Party, LGPE, Smash Ultimate)
Mid tier: 3 (Kirby Star Allies, Tropical Freeze, Mario Tennis Aces)
Total: 6

2019:
Top tier: 4 (NSMBUD, Ring Fit Adventure, Luigi's Mansion 3, Pokemon SwSh)
Mid tier: 3 (Mario Maker 2, Fire Emblem Three Houses, Link's Awakening)
Total: 7

2020:
Top tier: 1 (ACNH)
Mid tier: 6 (Clubhouse Games, Paper Mario: The Origami King, Super Mario 3D All Stars, Momotaro Densetsu, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, Among Us)
Total: 7

2021:
Top tier: 1 (Pokemon BDSP)
Mid tier: 4 (3D World + Bowser's Fury, Monster Hunter Rise, Skyward Sword HD, Mario Party Superstars), and Metroid Dread may soon join this list
Total: 5

Now here's what I have projected for 2022:
Top tier: 2 (Pokemon LA, Pokemon SV)
Mid tier: 3 (Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Mario Strikers: Battle League, Splatoon 3)
Total: 5

Now I may be slightly undercounting Splatoon 3, that has a chance of making top tier, but it doesn't affect the results much. 2022 is projected to have the lowest number of high selling games, and in fact things really dropped off after the pandemic with Animal Crossing (which was originally intended to be 2019 anyway) and Pokemon pretty much carrying Nintendo sales wise. Other than that, sales have been okay but not great since the pandemic. So yeah, I would say this is evidence that we're a bit short on higher selling IPs.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, here are my rough predictions for sales for the games that haven't released yet:

Nintendo Switch Sports- 2.5 million
Mario Strikers: Battle League- 3 million
Xenoblade Chronicles 3- 1.75 million
Splatoon 3- 8.5 million
Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes- 1 million
Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope- 1.5 million
Bayonetta 3- 1 million
Pokemon Scarlet/Violet- 18.5 million
Advance Wars 1 + 2 Reboot Camp- 1 million

@Grumblevolcano I think you're being a bit generous here. The two Pokemon games will get 10+ for sure but I have questions about Splatoon 3 and Switch Sports cracking 10+. Splatoon 3 will suffer from being a mid gen sequel and those tend to do worse, so I could see it falling a tad short. And the Wii Sports games haven't been 10+ since the Wii and dropped off a cliff on the Wii U, the Wii fad seems to be over and I don't see it coming anywhere near 10. I'd even call it a success if it reaches 3+.

@Bolt_Strike

Do you count F2P games (Fortnite, Pokémon Unite etc.)?

@Bolt_Strike Splatoon 3 I think will depend on what separates it from Splatoon 2 (hence why I said maybe), it if manages to stay fresh then I could see it be over 10 million. As for Switch Sports, the charts show Switch Sports still having strong momentum. I think the big thing will be about when Golf launches and the timeline for modes beyond that.

@Screen Those are a little more complicated to chart because the monetization is different. I don't think they're being tracked. And even if there were, there are no new ones this year.

@Bolt_Strike And that's all without you mentioning the switch's killer app, Kirby.

@Bolt_Strike

Does Fall Guys count?

I know it released 2 years ago, but it did get 20 million downloads.

Unite got almost 100 million (last update was 70 million)

Potential spoilers for tomorrow's Partner Showcase:

@Screen
Free to play games should be counted differently. Because they're free so a lot of people give them a spin just to see what they're about