Topic: Next Nintendo Direct?

@FishyS I mean, they Twitter dropped Paper Mario: The Origami King and Everybody 1-2 Switch (IIRC some others too), and those were fairly significant unannounced games. Not entirely out of the question that they could do the same for whatever handful of remakes they have left.

I wouldn't be surprised if they don't even have enough for a Mini. They just don't seem to have much period.

@Bolt_Strike I assume Origami King would have been in a direct if covid didn't mess with the 2020 direct schedule so much.

As for Everybody 1-2 Switch.... it was announced not long before a direct. 😆 I feel like they decided the direct was too packed and everybody 1-2 Switch would actually take away from it. Considering it got terrible reviews and didn't sell particularly well, they might have been correct.

Fundamentally Nintendo has very few games slated for the rest of the year after March (not even a Pokemon game) so they will want to announce whatever is happening this year at some point in a direct even if it isn't a massive 40 minute one. There are 2 games without dates, so those could be Twitter dropped. We have... 4 games this year announced for 10 months. Even if delays mean we don't get a full 6 more games, we will definitely get a few. Plus indies etc. means plenty for a direct or at minimum a mini direct.

I think people are forgetting that Switch 2 is still on the horizon. If the current batch of rumours are correct and it's Q1 2025, and assuming we're talking calendar Q1 and not Nintendo fiscal Q1, we're talking a launch somewhere between 1 Jan and 1 April 2025. If that's the case then Nintendo really has to at least mention its existence before May when they release their financial results for the year. And certainly would want to mention it before their AGM in June

Of course yes, if they follow the pattern of the Switch schedule to the letter that wouldn't mean a Direct for Switch 2 this year. With Switch they had an E3 in 2016 that was basically just Breath of the Wild which by then was confirmed to be on Switch. But they showed it only on Wii U. They mention "NX" just once in their financial report ending March 2016 only to say that NX is planned to release in March 2017. And the only official piece of media about the Switch itself was that announcement trailer and an appearance on Jimmy Fallon. The first full "Direct" for Switch, although it technically wasn't a "Direct", was in January 2017

My guess is that we get official confirmation of Switch 2 in the next couple of months. I think at the very least we have a Direct in June that talks about cross-generation games if not a reveal of the Switch 2 itself. And, if the plan is for Q1 2025, I don't think we can get deep into Q4 without a full reveal. So I can't see there being a Direct-less 2024. Even if they have nothing to say for Switch for the end of this year, and I'm not convinced of that, I'm sure there'll be either a Direct or a Direct-like presentation for Switch 2 at some point in 2024

@skywake What makes you so sure they wouldn't follow the Switch's reveal plan? They could just reveal the codename and maybe release date for the new console during the Spring instead of details such as final name, design, specs, pricing, or launch lineup and think that would be sufficient to quiet investors. And no, I don't really count a big presentation like the January one as a Direct, but I do think there's at least a chance we could get one of those late in the year. In terms of regular old, prerecorded Directs, I don't think we'll get the next one until next February, with the next news in terms of big new 1st party games not coming until late 2024/early 2025.

@Bolt_Strike
I'm not sure, I'm speculating. But what I think is that in 2016 they had space to talk about BotW and 3DS neither of which has a parallel for this year. Also with Wii U/3DS -> Switch there wasn't a library transition like there may be for Switch -> Switch 2. Switch was a hard reset, Switch 2 won't be. I think they really have to put some energy into talking about Switch 2 this year

Maybe even more fundamentally in terms of timing, the Switch reveal timeline had an official reveal in October. And there was what was effectively an old-school E3 like presentation in January for it. Then a launch in March. Even if they generally follow that timeline and it's launching sometime between January and April.... what's stopping that reveal trailer being a proper Direct? Or it happening in August? Or that January bit being in November instead? They could well follow the Switch timeline to the letter and we'd then end up with no Switch 2 Direct this year but.... if it's launching early next year that's a fairly narrow path to follow

Nintendo started spotlighting wave 6 of the Booster Course Pass for Europe (March 2nd). When the US spotlights start, we may be able to get an idea for when we get info on Mario Kart's future.

For Europe the timing of the articles would be:

• Tour Rome Avanti - March 2nd
• GCN DK Mountain - March 9th
• Wii Daisy Circuit - March 16th
• Piranha Plant Cove - March 23rd
• Tour Madrid Drive - March 30th
• 3DS Rosalina's Ice World - April 6th
• SNES Bowser Castle 3 - April 13th
• Wii Rainbow Road - April 20th

Those timings feel possible for surprise Booster Course Pass 2/wave 7 type situation.

@Grumblevolcano
There aren't many more tour courses left to adapt unless we start going into multiple variations of snes courses, and they already stopped adding new content to it. A new pass definitely isn't happening. A standalone wave 7 could be possible, but I would think they'd have added it in a long time ago and they even made a giant booster course credits sequence at the end. I really doubt there's anything more.

I think at this point the next time we hear about Mario Kart will be Mario Kart 9 for Switch 2 in 2025

@Sigran102 @skywake The way I'm looking at it is Nintendo internally delays Switch 2 as long as is needed to create a very strong 1st party lineup, essentially learning from the mistakes of the Wii U era (some of those Wii U droughts were very rough) but Switch 1 still needs content to maintain momentum during that delay period.

So Switch 1 games planned for release in the early Switch 2 era become Switch 1 games released before Switch 2, Tour still has plenty of retro tracks and Piranha Plant Pipeline not in MK8 Deluxe so maybe could port more of those over, do more Splatoon 3 Splatfests, etc.

Nintendo forecast the Switch to have a 10 year life cycle. 7 down, 3 to go. Happy birthday to the best console ever made!

I think the next Mario Kart is gonna be a HUGE early switch 2 game to entice fans to upgrade and and called “Mario Kart X” (counting Tour as the 9th.) Nintendo knows now with 8 Deluxe’s sales that the series has great staying power, so the new one will probably be similarly supported for awhile (though with no deluxe version) and probably last almost 10 years before the next one like 8.

@Noble_Haltmann Not sure I would count tour since it wasn't on console. All the MK arcade GP games were also not on console and didn't effect the numbering. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the only ones on console have been 1-8 and Home Circuit. So arguably Home Circuit is in fact MK 9... or more precisely it is the 9th fully distinct Mario Kart on console even though it is basically a spinoff rather than mainline.

So... who knows how they will label the next MK. 😝 I'm guessing 'X' also.

I'm not entirely convinced they won't just make Mario Kart 8 Super Duper Deluxe. But surely all the Switch 2 early adopters already bought MK8 by now? So new Mario Kart early on would definitely make sense. And if there is any 'gimmick' at all in Switch 2 beyond just 'more power' (AR?) , a Mario Kart game could use it at least optionally.

@FishyS @Noble_Haltmann
Microsoft famously skipped Windows 9 and Apple did the same going from iPhone 8 to iPhone X. So I wouldn't be surprised if they just jumped to 10. I believe 9 is an unlucky number in some Asian countries? Not sure what the reason is. Maybe it's just a marketing thing where "10" is much easier to sell. Also "Mario Kart Nine" to a German ear is probably not the best marketing message

My work skipped 13 for a major version for a similar reason

@skywake Well from what I had heard there was a coding reason why Microsoft skipped Windows 9, it was because they were using 9 as an abbreviation for Windows 95 and Windows 98 and that would've led to bugs. Not sure about iPhone though.

@Bolt_Strike Not an abbreviation, just a lot of third party programs would search for "Windows 9" to see if the system was running on either 95 or 98, rather than properly checking the OS name. So suddenly all these old programs broke on the new OS during early testing (supposedly).

@Bolt_Strike @link3710
I know that's one of the stories that has developed but I'm not at all convinced it's actually true. The marketing name and the internal version number and the build number are not at all the same. Windows 95 was 4.0, 98 was 4.1, XP was NT5.1, Vista NT6.0, 7 NT 6.2, 8 NT6.2 and 10 was.... NT10.0

Also the theory doesn't even make sense. If that's how someone was checking versions it would've broken by falsely skipping Windows Me and Windows 3.1. Surely if you needed to do a check like that you'd be looking at the internal version number and checking if it was NT or not. Even more likely there's probably an OS call you can make to ask what your compatibility level is

I'm pretty confident the reason was purely marketing. They wanted a reset after 8 and they wanted to avoid 9 because it's not as marketable

Imagine if Nintendo went the Mortal Kombat route and called the next game Mario Kart 1.

@skywake The number 9 in German is pronounced differently from the word "no." 9 in german is pronounced "noin," and "no" in German is pronounced "nein."

@VoidofLight
Yes, but most Germans are at least bilingual and I'm sure a lot of the Microsoft marketing they'd be exposed to would be in English

I'm not German and my primary-school tier German is super rusty so Im not going to argue the point to hard. But given it's a product name I wouldn't be at all surprised if right now if you asked what OS they were running they'd reply with "Windows Eleven" and not "Windows Elf". Especially in the corporate space where you'd be working across borders

And to bring it back to Mario Kart, Nintendo is Japanese. Mario Kart 8 in the West is Mario Kart Eight. In Japan it's "Mario Kart Eito", not Hachi. So presumably all the marketing for a Mario Kart 9 would be "Nine"

Easier to just skip it

I HAVE A THEORY
Pyoro, the most accurate and trustworthy leaker, has said the release dates of Luigi’s mansion 2 HD and paper Mario thousand year four will be revealed on MAR10 day. Yes it could be a regular social media post, or, we could have a small direct on all things MARIO! About fifteen minutes, and more info on Papet Mario and Luigi’s Mansion, a new Mario Sports, and a peak at the new 3D Mario…coming for “switch systems” like legends za. I know it’s weakk but a man can hope