Topic: Next Nintendo Direct?

@skywake Mario Hoops was Square Enix and they're no longer doing exclusives so Nintendo would need to find a new studio if it was to be brought back. A fair few Nintendo franchises have been revived over the past few years so Bandai Namco working on a new Mario Sluggers meanwhile Camelot working on Golden Sun would be a potential way to revive 2 more dormant franchises.

@VoidofLight Gen 4 was four years long so it's not entirely out of the question that Gen 9 is also four years. Them breaking the 3 year pattern they've insisted on since won't damage the franchise, they'll just have to come up with more TCG sets to stretch that aspect out.

I personally think the most likely scenario is that Gen 10 is a November 2026 release and they simply don't have a November 2025 release (and have some other Nintendo release instead).

As for Direct timing, the 2022 and 2023 general Directs in February were really early in the month (February 9th and 8th respectively) so I think if they do one in February 2025 it'll be on February 5th.

I find it hard to imagine Nintendo having enough still in the works for Switch 1 to even justify a Direct.

@IceClimbers One can hope they don't have a November 2025 game, but people were like this with 2022. They thought Gen 9 was coming in 2023 due to Legends, only for it to drop in 2022.

February game shadow drop, more about the March game, an April game, a May Switch 1 game, buncha Switch 1 third party for the rest of the year so they can focus on Switch 2 exclusives next direct.

@FishyS I could see maybe a Direct Mini or something along those lines. Just a proper full length Direct would be pretty surprising to me. I think they could get away with not really doing anything if they wanted, if Switch 2 release is May or early June.

@BenAV
Plenty of reasons to be gently optimistic.
People thought that before the last Direct and we got new Mario games and a new Zelda.

Nintendo has demonstrated that it is very happy to hold things back from release until there is a blank spot in its calendar, for over a year in extreme cases (e.g Fire Emblem Engage).

They are also just very good at suprise announcing things coming out in a couple of months.

While I wouldn't expect any major original releases I'm sure they will have a handful or HD ports/remakes and a spin off game or two to cover the first half of this year as well as NSO and dlc like new Mario Party boards.

I DON'T CARE IF IT IS NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE, I WANT MARIO SPORTS MIX 2 BAYBEE!

And MUST Have BOXING on it with six pack Mario & Luigi. 😁

@Anti-Matter Honestly? I would be down for that

@Anti-Matter ok that's just never going to happen

@Groovz But neither is MSM2 so why not add more wishful thinking while we are at it lol?

@BenAV I could see something like:

• February shadow drop
• More info on XCX Definitive Edition (perhaps a long segment like they've done with Xenoblade in the past)
• More info on Prime 4 (Direct closing with that)
• Announcement of 2-3 more unannounced games (2 if Legends Z-A is May - July, 3 if Legends Z-A is August - November)
• A new sport added to Switch Sports
• New update for F-Zero 99
• 3rd kits announced for Splatoon 3
• Something do with NSO retro game additions

@Anti-Matter I highly doubt that Mario and Luigi are going to be muscular. We've seen them shirtless countless times before.

Any chance Switch will get a price cut this year? If so, will it be before or after Switch 2 release? Would it be 50 dollar price cut (150/250/300) or less than that (like 175/275/325)?

@PikminMarioKirby I bet used Switches will get pretty cheap.

They will still try to have a prolific year for Switch 1. Even if they sell 20 million Switch 2s this year, 130M+ still want stuff to play while they arte playing the new console lottery lol.

@GrailUK To be fair, those Switch 1 owners have around 12,000 games to choose from; they could survive without too many more new Nintendo published games. It will be interesting to see whether Nintendo continues to have some smaller Switch 1 games to fill in the schedule after Switch 2 comes out or if they just leave it to the third parties.

@FishyS I reckon they will still avoid the cost of all their games being AAA. So the smaller games may as well be on Switch 1.