Topic: Next Nintendo Direct?

@Fizza
I think there's a fair bit of middle ground here. I think you're slightly overstating the greatness of this Direct because, lets be honest, if you exclude things already announced and the N64 games there wasn't all that much. Basically Kirby, Pikmin, various Square titles, boatloads of farming sims and a name/date for the already announced next Zelda. Nothing particularly mind-blowing in there I'd argue

For me I'd argue the most surprising announcements were that Zelda seems a bit closer than I thought it might be and we know have solid confirmation Pikmin 4 is in development. There was other stuff in there for sure but nothing tooo crazy. As I said earlier, this was a very "late cycle" Direct. Nothing wrong with that, that's just where the Switch is now

Also I disagree with the idea that people's expectations were "inflated" due to the rumours of Metroid Prime Trilogy and Wind Waker/Twilight Princess HD. Obviously they've been rumoured for a long while and I think it's fair to say they'll happen eventually. But if you think remasters of ~15 year old games are "high expectations" I'm not sure what to say to that.

@skywake You left out Fire Emblem which is a big deal to Fire Emblem fans and is a series which has really found a new life in the last 10 years but yeah, I could have done with a new wow game or for them to sell Pikmin and Zelda better to cap it off as a great Direct rather than a safe comfortable Direct. Top of my list to spice things up would have been that Switch built new Resident Evil game which was rumoured last year or the rumoured Donkey Kong game but hey ho, the Direct was decent enough.

Despite not seeing any gameplay people are already saying Pikmin 4 is gonna be on the next console as it's look too good to be a Switch game. lol

@westman98 Holiday season is November/December though, Bayonetta 3 is still Fall season.

@Fizza

I myself wouldn't say I hated it. Since Radiant Silvergun was confirmed and then shadow dropped, I was thrilled with the Direct. Although I was shocked that Metroid Prime (either the remaster or 4) was absent. Considering we already knew Tears of the Kingdom was going to be a Spring 2023 game, I assumed MP would've been the closer.

I don't hate the Direct, but I did find it disappointing. I put more trust into the Metroid Prime rumors than I should've, and I did so because of how far the bar was lowered. We went from a remaster of the Metroid Prime Trilogy rumor to just the first game. I figured that would be what Switch era Nintendo would do at this point. The bigger blow was that absence meant no chance of Metroid Prime 4 footage being shown. I have a growing concern that I would need to purchase more powerful hardware to play that game.

It's kinda become a tradition for me to make a collagey thing containing most of, if not, all the games shown in a nintendo direct after it airs. This one took a while I don't know why but this direct was just packed with stuff lmao

@Jackpaza0508 Great Work! Yeah, there were like 60 games or so

@Grumblevolcano
I guess I should have specified "holiday quarter".

For me, the direct was great. I don't think I touched on my opinions earlier, but there were some pretty good games revealed. The new Fire Emblem looked interesting, Octopath II is a game I'm most likely going to purchase on day one, hearing that Pikmin 4 isn't just a collective fever dream is nice (But I wish we got to see gameplay rather than a Pikmin Bloom ad), and Tears of the Kingdom was alright. Wish we saw more than just another teaser for it though.

Metroid Prime is my favorite game but I'm not sure I really what this, nor believe the rumor. It just seems stupid how conveniently this trilogy is totally happening to this remake of one game is totally happening, and I feel like it would just anger everyone that they would (presumably) pay full price for one game when it was already re-released as a trilogy for cheaper.

I sincerely doubt Nintendo is selling a game console on Metroid. Worst case scenario its FFVIIR (also a long delayed game that made it to its promised console anyway) and its a late Switch game that gets a port to new hardware a year later (quite frankly this is probably a more profitable move).

The Metroid Prime remaster rumors have a lot more merit than you may think.

Why? Well, the benefits of Retro Studios being a western game studio based in the US is that a lot of their employees and contractors have LinkedIn accounts which they regularly update.

Why is this relevant? Because a lot of Retro Studios workers, particularly those who specialize in the art-related departments, have indicated on LinkedIn that they have completed an unannounced project as of September 2021.

Metroid Prime 4 is an already-announced project, so it can't be that. What this means is that this completed project is likely the Metroid Prime remaster.

Considering we probably aren't getting the Switch successor until 2026.

Yeah, I can see it being until new hardware before we're playing MP4.

Like I said, I thought it was more possible as a remaster of just the first game is a much lower bar to reach. I do think it would be a very stupid decision to have such a release, considering Nintendo has offered the Metroid Prime Trilogy itself for as low as $10 on the Wii U eShop. $60 for even a Prime Trilogy remaster could be criticized let alone just a remaster of Prime. The fanbase is hungry though, so I don't know if the pricing would go over as negatively as it should if ever such a release was real.

I don't think Nintendo would sell a next generation system solely on Metroid Prime 4 either. I could see the game being part of a plan to get more of the Switch user base to upgrade though. Nintendo will probably do what they did with the Switch, and do a blow out for that first year. I hope though that Prime 4 is coming to the Switch.

The thing about the rumours is if they were fully true (which the Direct confirmed the rumours were at least somewhat fake) they'd clash with Bayonetta 3. Let's say for example Metroid released in November and Zelda released in December with both announced in the Direct, a fair proportion of people who may be interested in Bayonetta 3 would pick the remasters instead which isn't good for Bayonetta 3.

Meanwhile if the remasters were real and got announced a certain amount of time after Bayonetta 3 launches then Bayonetta 3 would be safe.

Given the timing of BotW 2 the only way WWHD/TPHD could be real in the near future is announce in November, release in December but even that seems unlikely. Maybe 2024 as part of a release strategy similar to the 3DS releases in 2017-2019 while the Switch was the main system?

As for Metroid Prime remaster(s), that has more credibility as the connected storyline makes releasing Prime 4 as the only Switch Metroid Prime game sounds very counter-intuitive. Sure Switch never got Metroid II and Fusion before Dread but it did get Metroid and Super Metroid which is more than can be said for Prime at the moment. Nintendo would likely want to time Prime at a point where Prime 4 is close to being shown off, the nearly 5 year gap between the Bayonetta 1+2 ports and Bayonetta 3 won't have done Bayonetta 3 much favours.

I just think at this point that the Twilight Princess HD/Windwaker HD rumor is nothing but a desire that keeps being spread around like a leak. It's persisted for years and years because it's one of the only few games that haven't been ported from the Wii U yet, and hasn't been debunked like Xenoblade X has. If it does happen, I don't feel like it'll happen because it was leaked to happen, but rather happen because people kept guessing enough times and finally wound up being right eventually. Same with the Metroid remasters.

@Grumblevolcano
Releasing Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD as cross-gen titles on both the current and next-gen Switches in 2024 makes sense. The next-gen Switch versions would probably be 4K remasters (rather than being direct, largely unchanged ports of the Wii U versions) as well.

Metroid Prime remaster existing has more validity behind it thanks to LinkedIn, so I am indeed surprised it never showed up in the Direct, but the Zelda ports feel like they are being willed into existence by desperate fans.

@Grumblevolcano Pikmin 4, should it actually come out this time, would be the only Switch Pikmin game.

@Euler They just revealed Pikmin 4 just to mess with us, it's getting delayed because some vocal fairys said Pikmin doesn't fit with their world view.

It kinda has been debunked though:

https://www.thegamer.com/tantalus-ceo-twilight-princess-hd-sw...

Of course, that doesn't rule out Wind Waker, and it's always possible that Nintendo could do TP in house or with the aid of some other developer. It just seems a heck of a lot less likely if Tantalus aren't involved.

@Matt_Barber Ah. I didn't know this was debunked. I guess people just never saw this.