Topic: Next Nintendo Direct?

I'm sure we will get a Direct soon. Nintendo are nurturing a user base approaching 150 million. They aren't just going to close shop and wait for their next console lol.

@chapuH @VoidofLight @GrailUK Yeah I have said a while back, how Nintendo treats the next Direct could depend on how they want to go about revealing the next console.

If Nintendo doesn’t want to overshadow all the games they want to either announce or give updates on that are still to come this year, a Direct will need to be sooner not later.

But also the next console is almost certainly going to have backwards compatibility so whatever is to come for the Switch will still work on the next console, which could mean Nintendo aren’t too concerned about just revealing new hardware first then start proceed to talk about current Switch games.

It’s all going to be what Nintendo feels is best to make sure there’s a spotlight on the games.

@FragRed To be honest, I think launching a successor looks after itself. You can have a grand reveal so day one Switch owners who are chomping at the bit for the next one gets hype and still release games for the Switch for the install base (hence b/c is a no brainer - Nintendo aren't going to kowtow to third parties for this.) Not everyone who has a Switch will upgrade day 1. The internet is very black and white about this. But there is nothing stopping revealing Mario 3D or whatever for next gen and Metroid Prime 4 for og. I dunno, I'm sure they know what they are doing. But their is a lot of narrative of 'closing shop' etc and I find that ludicrous for a smooth transition. You have to have a gradual phase out, not 'right that's it. NEXT!' My only headache is wondering how on Earth Nintendo has that kind of man power. I guess everyone working on the same device helps a bucket load (which is why I can't see Sony supporting a home console, VR AND a handheld! It's surely unsustainable.)

@GrailUK Nintendo doesn’t have that man power, hence the need for new buildings to house more teams, that new studio at Bandai Namco, and the fact a fair amount of games are outsourced. Also Monolith Soft has multiple teams which I assume they’ll continue to grow.

Yeah I get what you are saying about revealing the new console, but Nintendo are conservative so they may be more concerned about such things, especially judging by how they seem to be unsure about how to treat the internet sometimes.

@FragRed I have no idea what Nintendo resources are like. If they can still hit a game a month with a next gen console, then I will find a new level of awe with them. I Imagine first party software will stagger between ng and og (seems plausible) and third parties will bolster the ng until they finish their development shift. No idea, just spitballin'. It's hard to speculate because we don't even know what their next console is. If it's leftfield again, then we are all just wearing our keyboards out for nothing hahaha!

@GrailUK Not sure Nintendo will be able to pull off a game per month once the next console releases. They don’t have easy Wii U ports to help fill up that gap during early years. And the more powerful hardware will require significantly more resources which may stretch Nintendo. Just look how much they struggled with the leap into HD and 360 power. PS4 power is going to be another headache I think.

@FragRed The delay of their new building probably hasn't helped. And what with making sure they have enough titles going forward, yeah, there is a compelling arguement for no new system this year. But like I said, Nintendo's work ethic and integrity are exemplary in the industry so who knows.

@GrailUK The planned release of the console was already likely set in stone before the delay in the new building was recognised. Planning a console require so much work to get going in terms of actual production due to all the moving parts that need to come together like clockwork and I imagine a delay would cause huge headaches and problems that it is likely easier to just keep going. Neither Sony or Microsoft delayed their consoles when covid hit and I assume Nintendo are in the same position. Too late for a delay. But there is the Bandai Namco studio that seems to be focused on Nintendo games so that could help.

@FragRed
I'm a bit of a broken record on this but worth repeating. The new hardware won't require additional resources. It'll allow additional resources to be spent but it won't require it. If anything having more power available will reduce the development effort required

I expect this will be a very smooth transition

@FragRed To be fair, if one delayed the other would've taken full advantage of the delay to have a Xbox 360 style advantage so there wasn't really a choice but for both to release in November 2020. There's no equivalent in the same space as Switch so at most a delay would annoy some 3rd parties (e.g. Microsoft over the CoD deal).

Pretty much this. Console transitions tend to be more gradual nowadays Look at how long the 360/PS3 got cross gen after the XBO/PS4 launched, and how the XBO/PS4 are sticking around. And Nintendo themselves even got in on the action keeping the 3DS around for a few years after the Switch launched. But this is especially going to need to be true for the Switch. With how insanely successful the Switch is, they're not going to want to drop that immense userbase all at once. Not everyone can or will drop the Switch immediately and buy the Switch 2, they're going to gradually transition. So Nintendo will want to have some cross gen games to facilitate a gradual transition.

Yeah, 1 game per month is a bit much. As is they might have the resources for 1 every 6-8 weeks, but not 1 per month. They're going to need to continue expanding to get up to a 1 per month benchmark.

And one underrated aspect of this is that they're also going to want to grow their IP portfolio. They need enough games to sell, and I don't think they quite have enough right now (and certainly not enough that they're confident in selling). I think this gen they might get a bit more experimental. They'll have the typical cornerstones of their lineup, but they'll probably also start looking for more to add to their portfolio. New IPs. Dormant IPs. Spinoffs. Side series of existing IPs. I think we're going to see a bit more of these types of experiments and they're going to be looking to see which of them sell enough to be regular series to add to their lineup. We might have already seen the beginning of this with Princess Peach Showtime, they want to see if they can make this a successful spinoff series so we could get Peach games every couple of years. If they're going to even begin to replace the massive drop in releases that comes with not having tons of past gen ports to fall back on, I think this is how they're going to have to do it.

@FragRed True but you have to have the software. You can't just release hardware for hardwares sake! And I wonder what on Earth it can release with. We've just had a Zelda. Splatoon is getting dlc. They said they have a direction for the next Mario Kart early last year. These franchises must be a couple of years away for their next release. If we see a new 3D Mario game for Switch this next Direct, then I'm going to start buckling my seatbelt for another year of Switch! And you talk about planning stuff well in advance, well you can't cherry pick whats set in stone. Nintendo said Switch has a 10 year lifespan. And I have to say, that to me aligns much more favourably with new titles in these series. Animal Crossing doesn't really need next gen (maybe it's a good system seller, I don't know.) Metroid Prime 4 isn't a system seller (and there again, the delay aligns with 10 years of Switch.) Again, they need a strong line up. And I think the next major entries seems to align more with the 10 year road map.

For the record, just playing Devil's advocate here. I want Switch 2 NOW lol. But blimey, I would be left thinking Nintendostaff need a bloody holiday if they can announce the console next month with a slew of games! And besides, we've had no credible 'news' / 'leak' for something that folk are thinking is just about to be announced.

@Bolt_Strike The only way I see a game a month is Switch 4K series of titles. And to be honest, no one on this forum thirsty for a system capable of 1080 this 4K that and 60 thingymajigs has ANY excuse to moan about it...because that's exactly what they are telling Nintendo they want! Much like mobile phone users, spec heads make their bed, let em lie in it. They want as high a fidelity as they can yet complain over remasters giving them what they want lol.

@GrailUK It feels like the main potential outcomes are:

• Surprise, Switch 2 isn't coming in 2024
• Continue supporting Switch mostly as normal while the biggest games like 3D Mario are Switch 2 exclusive
• Nintendo accepting a slower release schedule (e.g. 1 release in January - March, 1 release in April - June, 1 release in July - September, 3 releases in October - December)
• They go down the PS5 route and we get stuff like TotK Remastered, SMB Wonder Remastered, Pikmin 4 Remastered, Splatoon 3 Remastered, XC3 remastered, etc. even in the presence of full backwards compatibility

The 2nd option feels most likely but it would be a neat surprise to see the 1st option.

Well 3D Mario and Mario Kart are slam dunks, yeah. Animal Crossing is a situation where it doesn't need the power but it sells so much that that's also a no-brainer. Prime 4 is probably cross-gen like BotW (and while Prime hasn't historically sold super well, Nintendo's audience has changed in the last 17 years to the point where Dread did really well and Prime 4 might too). Beyond that, there's still a few IPs that could sell reasonably well:

-DK. There's been rumors about DK for several years and it hasn't had a new entry in 10 years, so I absolutely believe something DK is just around the corner.
-Luigi's Mansion. LM3 sold a whopping 12.82 million. I think we can consider LM to be one of the heavy hitters now. It's been 5 years since LM3, LM4 might not be a launch year title, but I could definitely see it coming Year 2 or 3.
-Smash. Now I don't think we'll be getting Smash 6 so soon. In fact, I think it'll probably be a long while before Smash 6 since Sakurai is probably retiring soon and they need time to consider where Smash should go next. Instead, I think Ultimate might get the MK8D treatment on Switch 2, re-release it with the original game + DLC, add even MORE DLC to it, and let that keep Smash fans busy and we don't get Smash 6 that generation at all. But a Smash Ultimate Deluxe will still print money for Nintendo because it's Smash.

I think there's enough here to justify a Switch 2 this year. We probably won't get ALL of this this year, but this would still be a solid roadmap for the first 2 or 3 years of the Switch 2 (at least in terms of tentpole releases).

Ehh, Switch 2 is looking like it won't be native 4K, the rumors AFAIK all point to 4K DLSS, and there's not a lot of 4K content out yet to incentivize everyone and their grandma from making the leap to 4K, just the high end enthusiasts. So I don't think the appetite is quite there for 4K enhanced ports yet, maybe that'll be more of a thing with 10th gen. There is an appetite for next gen enhanced ports, but I don't think 4K is how they're going to sell them.

@Bolt_Strike

Not sure about long term but short-medium term there is no reason Nintendo couldn't keep up the pace of games if they want to. It's easy to imagine Switch 2 with a game a month but Switch 1 with fewer since the simpler games and ports might go to both systems but the fancier or mainline games only to Switch 2. There will still be new Kirby games and Mario sports games and random new or revived or smaller franchises to fill in gaps and DLC for games like Splatoon 4 and Mario Kart 9. There are still unported Mario and Zelda and Kirby and Metroid games and many others. They may be almost out of Wii U games to port, but there are zillions of GameCube and Wii games they can port/remaster/remake as well as any DS/3DS games they can figure out how to move over. Heck, they could get 2 cross-console games in 2025 just remastering more Luigi's mansion and Metroid Prime.

Nintendo may decide to slow down but that will be more a question of whether they decide quantity of small games and ports gives them money or not. The big games will take the same resources they have on Switch-1 (as @skywake says they could take fewer resources since better hardware gives more wiggle room but with Nintendo's penchant for polish the very top games may take just as long).

Do I think however they are going to have a Switch-2-exclusive game every month next year? Seems very unlikely. Makes more sense for them to spread their resources out over exclusives and cross-gen so everyone gets something and Switch-1 users are slowly but surely FOMO-pressured to upgrade.

@Bolt_Strike I don't think Mario Kart is close to being ready, unless it take a little under a year and a half to make. But I have no idea about this sort of thing.

I think this week could be it and I want MORE mario lol

For this direct, basically the only even conceivable possibilities for Mario I think are some Mario sports game or Wonder DLC.

@FishyS Ehh, they do have a few old games they could remake, but the problem with that is that many of them, especially the ones they haven't already done, aren't really big sellers. They're decent enough, 1-2 million sellers, but there are a few experimental ideas that are more likely to outsell that, especially if they're based on an already popular IP or genre. To name a few I have in mind, here are some I think might be more profitable than a remake (or at least have a reasonable shot, I think all of these have a really good shot of being 5+ million sellers):

-An open world Mario Kart subseries
-A Rosalina spinoff that serves as a continuation of the Mario Galaxy series
-A Splatoon spinoff/subseries of some kind (pretty much anything adjacent to Splatoon's core gameplay could work, a platformer, an open world game, something survival based, all of the above, just something that explores different elements that a multiplayer arena shooter typically wouldn't).
-A Bowser spinoff of some kind (not quite sure what direction to go in with this, but Bowser is a very popular character so if they can come up with some that fits him well, it should sell well)
-A Tom Nook spinoff of Animal Crossing that's more of a tycoon game (think something like Roller Coaster Tycoon, something that's a bit more focused on building areas/facilities than repetitive chores and decorations).

Long term they're definitely going to want a few more IPs, and I don't even think this much is going to be enough to get them to 1 per month, but it would be a great start.

@GrailUK So there's a couple of things to consider with Mario Kart. First, up until the release schedule got screwed up with the Wii U tanking and the Switch sitting on a Wii U port, Mario Kart games reliably came out every 3 years. Second, everything they've done since the original version of 8 has been relatively low effort, mainly just porting old tracks to new devices with only a handful of new tracks and characters here and there. Third, the last retail release of a Mario Kart was 7 years ago, which is the longest drought in series history. With all of that in mind, I think they've had new ideas stewing for a while that should be ready soon. Short of them doing something really ambitious and different and unexpected like my open world Mario Kart idea (which again, I think would be better as a subseries to release in between core entries so they can have a 2nd Mario Kart per console that's very different from the core Mario Kart entries and won't cannibalize them), the next Mario Kart should be Year 3 at the latest.