Topic: Next Nintendo Direct?

@skywake Are you basing that on a conventional manufacturing cycle? Because Nintendo have said they want to alieviate scalpers as much as possible (they are transparent.) That could mean a longer production run before launch. And what with the currency fluctuations, it could be that they were being ahead of the curve. Still any announcement this week is just going to get lost in all the media coverage of the election. It's fine for the 10% of folk who follow gaming sites etc, but their audience is everyone. And everyone isn't paying attention at the moment.

It's the release schedule that still has me thinking an announcement this year is fairly likely. It'd be weird to go into next year with virtually no upcoming first party Switch games if the new console isn't launching in the first half of the year. Think we should hear about one or the other sooner rather than later.

@GrailUK
Lets be real, we're all guessing here. My thoughts RE the timeline on manufacturing is simply that the firing gun has been shot. And it was shot two months ago. From what I've looked up of other major hardware launches the lead-in for this kind of thing is around 8 months. That puts us in April. We also know from other hardware launches that usually the gap between announcement and launch is about 6 months. 6 months before April? That's now

Now as you said, they could elongate the manufacturing stage to have more stock at launch. And they've said as much. But I would suspect a longer lead in would be a month or two. Note that at this scale a month is millions of units. That's a lot of additional stock for launch. So I can't see a longer lead in being 3, 5, 6 months or something. It'll be one or two months. To my uneducated mind in this space? Maybe that pushes us into June. And I guess if it was June that could work with a mid-January announcement. But anything on this side of that.... it really feels like it needs to be this year

Of course I could easily be wrong it's just it seems that an announcement, well, pretty much now for a release around April makes the most sense with the evidence we have

In terms of the election coverage stuffs, as I said in my earlier post it's just a question of media coverage. And this week the US elections are probably the least interesting they're going to be for a while. This week is the quiet before the storm. Next week at the very least there'll be all eyes on the US for the count. If we get something like a 2000 result then that'll drag on for months. If we get another 2020 then, well, the Orange baby is going to be stealing all the attention I suspect. And if that happens January is the month they're going to struggle to get coverage

@skywake I've written January off already. Poor month for announcements as folk are skint and on a come down from Christmas haha.

@GrailUK
It's kinda the thing though isn't it. There are only 5 months left and it has to be one of them. December is a dead end, January is similar, March feels too late, November and February don't make sense because they'll be immediately after investor meetings and it makes more sense to do these announcements before.....

Every month has a reason why it's not that month, but it has to be one of them

My own 2 cents - I think they will wait until early new year to announce the successor.

There is still a huge contingent of 'gaming casuals' who may be in the market for a Switch1, and will likely not even have awareness of a potential successor - let alone an impending announcement. The formal announcement will then cause ripples in mainstream news, and land in the laps of those previously unaware... potentially impacting Christmas sales I suppose?

@skywake I think the teaser announcement of the reveal will be the one last thing in the Feb Direct. Way the internet plays out is, the Direct tweet will not have a 'Switch 2 will not be discussed.' Nintendo Prime will make 27 videos about how it will be the main focus of the Direct and regurgitate aything he reads on forums and Twitter. But we'll get the event date right at the end...for sometime in March. And there will be drama that we didn't get more lol. Aaand so the hype machine ramps up.

(And I say this purely in the vain hope that it is sooner lol!)

Today's announcement is XCX for Switch:

Forget the switch 2, finally we got the definitive edition!!!

@Grumblevolcano Aw that’s genuinely lame. Hopefully no resources were taken from Xenoblade 4, since X isn’t great :/

@Grumblevolcano What a weird thing to drop a trailer out of nowhere. No complaining tho, that game should've been ported like 5 years ago. It didn't deserve to be stuck on Wii U.
I guess today is no Switch 2 announcement day tho.

There goes the Switch 2 announcement, honestly probably one of the least hype things they could announce right now (for me at least). Why couldn't this have been in a September Direct?

Better news than a direct for me. Pretty much nail in the coffin for a Nintendo Direct announcing anymore games for the OG Switch this year.

SamusHunter, an infamous 'leaker', has returned this year and claimed that Emio was a Famicom Detective Club game and was right. Recently SamusHunter made another claim, which was considered an Xenoblade X hint, and that just came true.

Based off of the fact that both of these were on eShop/Nintendo websites right after their full announcements, this could be similar to how Pyoro got his hints. Pyoro supposedly agreed with the Famicom thing after he went in hiding (although I think the post is gone now).

I’m still not trusting these leaks, although they are certainly weird timing.

Can't wait for this - one of my fave games ever.

So are we going to have people saying we need to wait until the end of March before Nintendo reveals the Switch 2 so not to overshadow Xenoblade Chronicles X? I was assuming it’ll be next year anyway but I didn’t think there’d be anything in March.

Now they just need to port the zelda remasters and I can sell my Wii U.

@PikminMarioKirby Samushunter isn’t a leaker. They’re a fraud. The monster hunter leaks that gained them “credibility” was a powerpoint anyone could read. Please don’t put stock into their farce.

I'm waiting for Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival Deluxe Edition for Switch. 😁

@VoidofLight Yeah I’m not trusting them since they were considered pretty much the most obviously fake leaker, but at least this time their guesses are more on-point. The timing of their leaks have actually been pretty good, but could very well be taken from someone else or just a lucky guess.I’m just surprised to see any accuracy whatsoever XD