Topic: Next Nintendo Direct?

@PikminMarioKirby It’s Thursdays it happens I think

If we do get a Direct, if there is anything like a miracle port, all the Youtube morons will be wondering why it wasn't kept till Switch 2...

It's less than last week but it's not small; kind of average for recently. One weird eShop change though - for some reason in the recent releases tab on Switch you now can't scroll back more than a week... it was definitely not like that before, not even last week. So things are happening, but I have no real guess if they mean anything.

@FishyS Interesting, I wonder why they're doing it that way? I don't see any reason for it only to be one week...

@PikminMarioKirby Ignore my theories, it turns out the eShop was just mildly broken for half an hour and by total coincidence stopped loading at exactly one week back. Now it's back to normal.

@FishyS I wonder if that was just a one-off glitch or if it effected everyone? I don't see any maintenances upcoming as of now, so they probably aren't making changes to it.

This is the setup of general Direct timing when compared with close Splatoon 3 Splatfest/Big Run:

September 2022

• Pre-launch Splatfest - August 26th - 28th (Rock vs. Paper vs. Scissors)
• Direct - September 13th
• Splatfest - September 23th - 25th (Gear vs. Grub vs. Fun)

February 2023

• Direct - February 8th
• Splatfest - February 10th - 12th (Dark Chocolate vs. Milk Chocolate vs. White Chocolate)

June 2023

• Big Run - June 7th - 9th
• Direct - June 21st
• Splatfest - July 14th - 16th (Vanilla vs. Strawberry vs. Mint Chip)

September 2023

• Big Run - September 1st - 3rd
• Splatfest - September 8th - 10th (Shiver vs. Frye vs. Big Man)
• Direct - September 14th

June 2024

• Big Big Run - June 7th - 9th
• Direct - June 18th
• Splatfest - July 12th - 14th (Palace vs. Theme Park vs. Beach)

If there's one this month the setup is:

• Splatfest repeat - February 7th - 9th (Dark Chocolate vs. Milk Chocolate vs. White Chocolate)
• Direct - ?
• Big Run repeat - Likely March 7th - 9th

The general trend is Direct up to 2 weeks after the Splatoon 3 event. While it could happen this week, there is still hope for next week if it doesn't happen this week.

It’s 1:30am my time and the craziest theory popped into my head: what if a reason for a usb c port being on top of switch 2 is so that it can be linked using a short cable to a switch 1 and, with help from a special holder accessory, be used as a huge DS with the switch 1 console as the top screen and full switch 2 with joy cons as the bottom?

This could explain the weird nso drop from last week because they’re actually saving the major nso news for the April direct (being DS games available exclusively on switch 2) and in the potential February one we’ll just get something like Smash Bros 64 with the “big deal” treatment like they did with Earthbound and Goldeneye.

I don’t know if that’s a really stupid idea to make such a major feature exclusive to those who own both consoles and I’m way too tired to research if it’s possible for a usb c cable to link 2 consoles like that, but one can dream 😅

welp, natethehate (who admittedly doesnt have a great track record, but accurately predicted the switch reveal) says he hasnt heard ANYTHING about a February direct. hope is slowly drifting away 😕😕😕
@ImGrenadeMan thats actually a rly clever idea! i dont know if nintendo wants to stray too far off the “normal” path though, also i think the whole idea of a new console is leaving the old behind, but maybe youll prove me wrong!!! 😸
also @Grumblevolcano is the best direct predictor out there, always super logical and reasonable! like when in doubt of a direct, i always read what they say 😹

@OctolingKing13 I am so tired of the cult following around that guy. He backtracks on his information so often, and gets things right once in a while and then the cycle starts once again. Similar with that Grubb guy. Grumblevolcano is always finding this random patterns that never pan out haha

@FreasurePlanten I'm not an insider, I'm just a random person who sees fun in finding patterns and predicting stuff from those patterns. It's only natural that I'd get plenty of stuff wrong.

I miss the days when insiders didn't run rampant. It was so exciting when Pyoro's credibility was decimated over the June 2024 Direct as it allowed for nice surprises in the general Direct itself and also the complete mystery surrounding Nintendo creating a M rated game with Emio (is it Nintendo's return to horror for the first time in decades?).

@Grumblevolcano But it is a mathematical fact that you can almost always find regularities if you look for them. Most of them are meaningless.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsey_theory

@FreasurePlanten huh i mean i dont think its that serious but the random patterns are usually really well researched and reasonable by them😛

I mean... Nintendo organizes both of them and generally tries to make their own calendar make sense. They probably have a variety of internal scheduling restrictions. Does Nintendo try to align those two things? Probably not. Might there be various internal Nintendo calendar reasons why they happen to often align? Quite possibly. Do those internal hidden variables mean that one is a good predictor for the other? Possibly, possibly not; you would have to be an insider to know for sure or try to run the data long enough to decide it is random or not. That's the thing about statistical patterns; you can make a hypothesis based on prior data and then test that hypothesis based on future data.

That being said.... guessing things about when and what a future direct will be is literally the whole point of this thread. As Grumblevolcano said, finding potential patterns and predicting off of them is just one fun way to do that.

Although none of us here have a great overall track record, Grumblevolcano has been shockingly good at making NSO predictions based on patterns which is why some of us are interested in their ideas.

To your original point, I agree on the whole Nate cult being tiring. But it's also true he sometimes has insider knowledge. He normally says very vague things but he doubled and tripled down on the Switch 2 reveal date even though it was a day in January most people thought was very unlikely; clearly someone in the know told him when it would happen. For whatever reason people like to grab onto his every word even though he himself admits he only sometimes has insider knowledge. tbh, it's more fun to just look for silly patterns and guess for ourselves.

I mean making predictions is a large part of this Direct, as this is essentially speculation for the next Nintendo Direct. I personally really like seeing GrumbleVolcano's and others' make predictions based on patterns and assumed rules. Sure, we're predicting so we're not getting everything right, but sometimes the patterns actually do follow through. There are plenty of patterns that are most likely intentional from Nintendo's part, like February, June, and September being the general months for Directs, major twitter/youtube shadow reveals meaning there's probably Direct in given timeframe, Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday being the most likely days for general Directs, etc.

As for Splatfests, I agree with @FishyS that Nintendo tracks everything Nintendo does, so if they feel the need to not overlap these 2 things, they won't.

Leaking has really become a problem. Most of the time I don't really care, but I don't think Nintendo likes it at all. Emio actually was leaked by SamusHunter to be Famicom Detective Club. Not that I trust SamusHunter, but Pyoro said that that might actually be right.

I still see Pyoro as credible as for some reason he keeps on getting things right (including Switch 2 reveal and XCX trailer).

With the June 2024 Direct, Echoes of Wisdom, Mario Party, and M&L Brothership were all leaked (which were the biggest new reveals), but not all of it was Pyoro. I still think the reason Nintendo didn't put the Direct games on the eShop right away was to get Pyoro to not leak it. I don't think they'll have to worry about this in the near future, but I also don't think Pyoro is done leaking things.

The Switch 2 leaks were pretty bad, but that was pretty much Nintendo's decision. An September/October reveal would've worked a lot better, especially if they started mass production at that point. It didn't feel like Nintendo was trying to take down the leaks either, probably because people would take that as confirmation it was real.

@FreasurePlanten
It's a speculation thread, let people speculate. I would note that a post just a few up from yours dropped a rather insane and, frankly, far less credible idea. That the top USB port could be used as an attachment for an OG Switch to enable DS on NSO. No response at all

And yet somehow we feel the need to trash the idea that maybe Splatfests and Directs align. Which, frankly, seems like it could well be a thing given both are regular events and a Direct is the kind of place where you would want to talk about an event like that

Saying there's no use looking at patterns here is somewhat but not entirely valid. Because there are definitely some patterns. Like how they usually announce things immediately before investor meetings or how they generally try to avoid long gaps between events. Or how they try to avoid talking over other industry events so they can get some clear air in the news cycle

I don't think that level of ridicule was warranted

@skywake I mean, of course. Speculating is what this thread is about. But the post you're referring to just drops an idea that the person had. I think that's exactly the kind of post that is most fun to have around here, even if I also think it's really implausible. I do, however, think you're fooling yourselves by thinking that some (not all) of these regularities are evidence whatsoever. That's the part of it that I think contributes to speculation here and other places going awry. It's the rationalization of wishful thinking in some cases.

Nowhere did I say, contra what you're suggesting, that no regularity means anything or there's no use looking at patterns. Of course some of them do mean something. Otherwise we couldn't predict anything about anything. But in some of the cases you mentioned you can find a rationale that explains a causal connection: Nintendo doesn't want to get overshadowed by international or industry events; they have to satisfy their investors; they organize their fiscal year by quarters, etc. In the case of splatfests, while you say that "a Direct is the kind of place where you would want to talk about an event like that", I'm pretty sure that they have seldom talked about Splatfests in general Directs. The only thing I can imagine we could say is that Nintendo probably wouldn't have a Splatfest on the same day as a Direct, but that's hardly a point worth making because Splatfests are on weekends. And Nintendo announced the Switch 2 when DKC Returns HD launched, so that also doesn't mean much, as they've clearly now shifted focus to the next Splatoon. I also find it suspicious that the pattern is only presented for the last couple of years. Presumably it doesn't hold up for Splatoon 2, otherwise they would have added it as data points. It's a kind of cherry picking that can raise people's hopes when it's not real evidence.

Personally, I wouldn't be surprised to see something before April. But this is based on wishful thinking and gut feeling. This is also a very unusual circumstance where Nintendo has announced a Direct far in advance. A regularity that would be relevant would be to check if they have done this in the past and if when they have done this, they had at any point a presentation in between announcement and Direct. If not, assuming that they keep doing things that way it increases the likelihood that there is no presentation, just like we didn't get a general Direct in the Summer of... was it 2021?

Actually, I don't even think there is a regularity here. Splatfests were a monthly event. So the maximum amount of time you could be from a Splatfest would be 2 weeks (either in advance or afterwards). And the only data point presented for February is actually the one where the Nintendo Direct happened before the Splatfest haha

PS: Going by the data, if there would be a Big Run repeat, assuming they follow the original schedule of events as they were coming out (big if), then the most likely date is 14th to 16th of March, actually, not the week prior.