Topic: Next Nintendo Direct?

@kkslider5552000 Wait which trailer was Loid in? I probably skipped it

It was one of the games in the montage and he shows up for just a second. I had to go back to double check I saw it correctly.

@kkslider5552000 Oh weird, I’ll have to look

That mini direct was lowkey better than most General Directs.
I expected it to be decent but it really surpassed my expectations.

@iLikeUrAttitude the stuff shown is kinda the type of direct you want to do live, I thought it was gonna suck!

Ahh, the fabled June 29th is finally here. Time for all the leakers and insiders to go back on their predictions!

@StarPoint they'll just move the goal post as usual.

@StarPoint Not really, June 29th can be explained by it was June 29th in some territories when yesterday's Partner Showcase went live.

check out the showcase of Mario+Rabbids Sparks of Hope

@Grumblevolcano @Slowdive I suppose region timing is a thing lol. My bad...

Back in 2020 there was a weekly news setup for awhile for example:

• August 18th - Indie World
• August 26th - Partner Showcase
• September 3rd - SMB 35th Anniversary Direct
• September 8th - Age of Calamity announcement
• September 17th - Partner Showcase
• September 24th - Kirby Fighters 2 announcement (released same day as announcement)
• October 1st - Steve announced for Smash Ultimate

While not part of the consecutive news weeks, July 20th was the first Partner Showcase and August 5th was the Pikmin 3 Deluxe announcement.

I get feeling Nintendo's doing something similar now, so maybe we get something like this following the June 22nd XC3 Direct and June 28th Partner Showcase:

• Week beginning July 4th - Bayonetta 3 trailer (if it's still releasing this year)
• Week beginning July 11th - MK8 Deluxe wave 2 DLC announcement
• Week beginning July 18th - Next wave of N64 games for NSO Expansion Pack
• Week beginning July 25th - Splatoon 3 Direct
  ...etc.

2022 could be similar to 2020

@Grumblevolcano Yeah this makes most sense, though are you suggesting there’s no September Direct this year? I do definitely feel we won’t see any unannounced first party games, such as the Zelda replacement or Metroid Prime remake/remaster that was supposedly coming (I don’t know why Jeff Grubb gets so much attention). The second half of this year is pretty stacked. The only negative is Nintendo missing having a yearly Zelda title.

@Grumblevolcano @NintendobyNature, Jeff Gruff has stated in his twitter that Nintendo will do severals presentation around summer, 2020 was a expection because of the pandemic, i expect a dedicated Direct for Bayonetta 3/Splatoon 3, Nintendo might do the tradicional setembre Direct, but now focusing in early 2023 games such as Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild 2, Nintendo line up for this year is pretty much complete, we only need to know Bayonetta 3 release date e Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild 2 name e release date.

If we go off the theory that Nintendo likes to host general Directs near big gaming conventions/events...

Tokyo Game Show 2022 hasn't been cancelled, so a September Direct should be expected.

@FragRed I think it all comes down to when the next hardware launches. September general Directs cover early on in the following year (usually January - March though sometimes branches out further like XCDE in the September 2019 Direct) but Nintendo will probably want the next BotW 2 trailer to coincide with the reveal of the next hardware. So if hardware release month was March, they'd likely only have a September general Direct if they were announcing the next hardware.

@Grumblevolcano I honestly don't think future N64 games will be announced in waves. That was just something they did for the initial batch.

Future additions will be announced individually as they come like they do with NES/SNES titles. So like in July they'll announce whatever N64 game is coming that month, and then again in August, and so on.

@Grumblevolcano I don’t see new hardware launching until 2024. With chip shortages and the Switch selling so incredibly well, and to be honest a lack of credible rumours or leaks about the actual hardware makes me think we aren’t getting anything for at least another year.

Excellent point. Can anyone tell us what the NX rumours were like prior to late 2016? That might give us some much-needed insight.

Current rumours need to answer the following questions to be considered plausible, IMO:

• Would the upgrades and new hardware be competitively priced? (At the moment this is practically equivalent to asking - when do the chip shortages ease?)
• Why does Nintendo think that this release date is the best time for launch?
• How will Nintendo avoid a repeat of the Wii U performance - i.e. how they do communicate an improved value proposition so convincing that people will set aside hardware that was (mostly) purchased within the last 3 years?
• Do the current sales figures and 3rd-party support actually justify this release timing?
• How does this release timing square with statements that Shuntaro Furukawa and others have actually made, on the record?
• How does this new hardware advance Nintendo's known development philosophies, such as Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology, the Blue Ocean Strategy, or enhancement of local co-op play?
• Perhaps most importantly - how do the lessons of past failures and current successes compel Nintendo to make an upgrade at this time? What specific opportunities and market pressures make this moment uniquely suitable? NCL seems to have learned from the Wii U that software needs to be more steadily released, but the success of the Switch has probably instilled some long thoughts in Kyoto. How they respond to the opportunites created by Switch?

I feel it would be better if we would all clearly identify and separate our desires from our conjectures. A new tablet with more (and faster) RAM and a stronger GPU would confer obvious advantages in the case of existing (optimized) software, sure.

From Nintendo's perspective, however, please consider that there is zero need for that at the moment - 3rd-party support and technically proficient ports like The Witcher 3 and Dying Light show that 4 GB of RAM (more like 3.5, functionally) and mid-2010s mobile GPU technology are sufficient to capture a huge segment of what I'd call the portable-trailing market - you know, those ports of five-to-10-year-old games so many like to sneer at. I think we can attribute much of the Switch's success to that market segment, however, a fact many of us core gamers seem determined to ignore.

At what point does NCL need to provide an upgrade to keep up that chase? I think that's where some real answers lie... then again, Nintendo's moves are notoriously difficult to predict, ain't they?

@IceClimbers That’s a good point, with the higher price point of the N64/Sega expansion to NSO, Nintendo announcing a batch of games at once was to try downplay any anger/uncertainty from customers.

@CANOEberry There was a LOT of rumours going around in the year leading up the Switch announcement. The actual details on the Switch did leak (Eurogamer covered it) but I don’t think many believed them and I think it kinda got buried under the daily avalanche of other not real rumours that went around. But it was definitely leaked.

Obviously whatever Nintendo and Nvidia are working on, I’m sure some third party developers have got some form of dev kit already. The Switch had early dev kits as early as 2012, so there’s hardware out there - it’s just a question of how close to the final specs/design it is. But as far as I have seen unlike previously, there’s been nothing leaked about whatever they are working on.