Topic: Next Nintendo Direct?

@Grumblevolcano Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader also got a release date and System Shock remake got announced for Switch and Switch 2 so that also to me says that there will not be another Partner Showcase this year, Indie World is still a possibility though
Maybe I'm alone in this but I think Prime 4 Direct is a terrible idea, even if it was just around 20 minutes it would show off too much of the game so an overview trailer that 6-8 minutes would be much better

@Bolt_Strike I wasn't necessarily talking about any one person in this thread in particular just my general thoughts based on what has been floating around the internet. I was just watching a video with some of the competitve smash bros players just the other day, and one of them was pretty adamant that the next smash bros shouldn't cut the roster and instead go for 100 characters (which I really hope they don't). I see this sentiment quite often.

But I agree with what you said and I think new modes would help make a new game feel distinct from the others. When people talk about Brawl they almost always bring up Subspace and it's probably the only reason why anyone still talks about that game even nearly 20 years later. They could really capitalize on a proper adventure mode. Or like I said at the end of my original post, taking inspiration from mario maker and expanding stage builder to other modes would add a whole new layer of multiplayer.

Like you said, I don't see smash bros ever going down the 3D route which is why I think this is the way to go. The only other thing I can think of is that they may give some character movesets an overhaul, since some characters have had the same moves for a while now.

@Vortexeo agreed, I only ever hear about Brawl because of the story mode..... Or the theme song. That one goes so hard, and I have yet to meet someone who played that game and can't hum the tune!

Nintendo's finally started to market Age of Imprisonment.

@skywake It's what viewers do with Digital Foundry analysis which can cause negativity cycles, we've seen it happen already with Switch 2 before. Nintendo bragging about performance has led to plenty of people having inflated expectations about the console, look at your typical Legends Z-A article comments section for example. But all this could've been avoided if Nintendo just didn't talk about performance at all.

@Grumblevolcano You know, maybe if they made the console more than just a spec boost they'd have something else to brag about.

@Bolt_Strike Then people people would complain that Nintendo wasted money on gimmicks rather than specs. It's a lost cause for the people who just like to rage complain.

I would argue that the criticisms of where Pokemon is visually and performance wise is a bit different. And certainly I would expect that a resolution bump for Pikmin 4 of all things would not attract the same commentary

Look, people who want to complain will use whatever hammer they have. Whether that's a DF analysis video or whatever else they might find. It's just the way it be. All I'm saying is that I don't think Nintendo is particularly fussed about that commentary. I don't think they'd be running away from it. Broadly, it's largely good news stories so why would they? .... I just don't think game resolution output is particularly high on their list in terms of marketing

As I said, in regards to Pikmin 4 getting a resolution bump on Switch 2, it could be in this free update like how the Galaxy 1 & 2 release had 4K support on Switch 2. Nintendo did not mention it in the announcement, it's not on the box, it was I believe on the eShop page in some regions. But it was basically not mentioned outside of post-launch technical analysis videos

And when you think about it it makes sense. The user who cares about this stuff either isn't really engaging with Nintendo's hardware anyways or is enough of an enthusiast that they'll find out this information anyways. But for the bulk of their audience it's just additional noise that gets in the way

@skywake That's... literally what they're marketing for some of these Switch 2 games, especially some of the S2Es because that's all they have going for them. They literally do little to nothing over their Switch 1 counterparts except better performance. Prime 4 and Z-A are good examples, the only other thing the Prime 4 S2E does over the Switch 1 version is mouse controls and for Z-A it's literally nothing else. So if they want people to buy the S2Es they pretty much have to market the performance, that's the only reason to spend the extra $10. I don't buy this notion one bit when about 80% of Nintendo releases, even before the Switch 2, are selling on the notion of "here's the exact same game all over again on the shiny new console with higher resolution/framerate", if they don't want people talking about the performance bump, add something other than a performance bump to these ports/remakes/remasters in the first place. It is utterly ludicrous to claim that Nintendo doesn't care about performance even in spite of their hardware being underpowered, you'd have to be blind not to see it.

Looks like tomorrow's the last chance for a Prime 4 Direct announcement. Next week is Age of Imprisonment's launch and Nintendo don't really do 1st party Directs the week of 1st party releases meanwhile the following week seems too late for a Prime 4 Direct.

@Grumblevolcano Why not Nov 11?

Imprisonment Nov 6
Prime Direct - shadow drop with the app - Nov 11
Kirby - Nov 20
Thanksgiving (big US holiday in top market for the game) - Nov 27
Prime 4- Dec 4

@RobLife1 Nintendo's game specific Directs have been at least 4 weeks before launch, for example:

• Kirby Air Riders Direct 2 - October 23rd, game launch November 20th
• DK Bananza Direct - June 18th, game launch July 17th
• MK World Direct - April 17th, game launch June 5th
• SMB Wonder Direct - August 31st, game launch October 20th
• Splatoon 3 Direct - August 10th, game launch September 9th
• XC3 Direct - June 22nd, game launch July 29th

Next week is the 4 week mark for Prime 4.

@Grumblevolcano

hmm the closest looks like 28 days. Interesting but Nintendo will Nintendo....

Without a dedicated prime direct to announce them, I suspect the odds of Prime 2/3 are zero this year.

@Grumblevolcano Ugh, if they end up skipping a Direct that's a legit doomed moment. Prime 4 desperately needs this, they have fumbled the marketing SO HARD for this game and as is I think it's not going to pass Dread let alone reach the 5 million mark that I think Metroid desperately needs to become relevant again. There is so little clarity on how this game is going to play that I can't see anyone other than Metroid diehards wanting it right now. The re-reveal just kept showing the same handful of clips and sections over and over and over that tell us almost nothing and then when they finally open their mouth to tell us more in the September Direct, they give us the open world bike sections with zero context to the point where you can't even tell how much it's like a traditional Metroid game or a bland open world game. Honestly whoever's in charge of the marketing for this game deserves to be fired, it feels like they've done everything possible to confuse the audience and make this game as unappealing as possible.

@Bolt_Strike My personal excitement for the game has been gradually deteriorating over time. I'm definitely not getting it at launch now because it comes out at the same time as Octopath so it's a matter of whether it ends up looking good enough for me to still pick it up later on after the initial hype. I was excited for it at one point but it's just a maybe for me at the moment.

We got a fairly long Treehouse segment showing the MP4 gameplay early on, so I'm not feeling completely in the dark. Sure, we only got to see the bike every recently, and that's thrown some into a loop about it, but that appears to me to be a relatively addition to a game built on previously established core elements.

Going back to Dread, that game didn't get its own Direct either and I don't think it particularly needs one. It's not like there's a high profile and camera friendly director like Sakurai and they've always been games best approached with an element of mystery about them. Let's also not forget that Prime Remastered was just dropped on the same day, and it seems to have been popular enough.

It's certainly a game that I'd like to be seeing more marketing for though, and I'd think that it's been a victim of the late year release pile-up. Maybe it was supposed to be ready in September, like that London Underground poster campaign at the time suggested, but missed the boat and it'll all have to be crammed into the first few weeks of December instead.

Finally, there's always the question mark over whether a game that's been delayed for so long is going to be any good or not. Sometimes you'll get a Diablo III out of it and sometimes you'll get a Duke Nukem Forever, with plenty in between. I think I can wait a bit longer to see the reviews come in, myself.

Right? I was so hyped for this game at first, but the terrible marketing for this game has sapped my excitement and made me concerned about the game.

Oh that Treehouse segment was such a nothingburger because they were only showing those curated segments from the earlier trailers that tell us basically nothing about the game. We didn't need to see that section in depth, it's typical Metroid gameplay we've seen over and over. The bike segment is what needed the Treehouse, not the boring samey tutorial and early game areas. We need details on what's new and improved in this game, not what we've already known about Metroid Prime for 20 years. Show us how the bike works. Show us some things we can do with the psychic abilities. Show us some new and returning abilities Samus has. Those are the elements of the game that need the marketing the most and those are the parts they seem to be deliberately avoiding.

They at least opened their mouth for Dread with the Dread Reports and more detailed trailers that actually revealed the new abilities you could use in the game. Prime 4 doing something similar would be acceptable, but they could really use something like that in a Direct for better visibility.

Prime Remastered was a remaster and most of the people that bought it knew exactly what they were getting. Not the case with a new entry. Also, I don't think Prime Remastered's level of "success" is going to be sufficient, especially when this is a game that had a full restart. Nintendo is likely going to want it to sell higher than usual to recoup the losses from the restart. I would guess it needs to reach around the 5 million mark, and any chances it had of doing that are gone now with how Nintendo has utterly mismanaged the marketing.

If it's not that's also an ill omen because what are the chances they'll want to make a Prime 5 if Prime 4 ends up going through all of this chaos and ends up with weak sales?

@Bolt_Strike That's the thing. If the game's troubled development has led to something that's sub par, it'll be pretty obvious after the release why it didn't get that much of a marketing push.

I'm obviously hoping for better than that though, and that's why I'd like to hold up some alternatives to Nintendo just not caring about it. With both Dread and Prime Remastered getting relatively low-key marketing, there's a chance that they think that that's all that it needs, and there is a bit of a pattern of dropping Metroid games without a lot of explanation in the past, so they might just be doing the same again. Even most of their remasters get a lot more of that than Prime did, after all.

That said, I'd also like to see some follow-up on the bike mechanics prior to launch. It might just be something that has to wait until the games in between have made it to market and probably won't take the form of a Direct that covers other new mechanics too.

@Matt_Barber Okay if this game still ends up mediocre after an entire restart, then I'm even more worried about Prime's future. If you have two different concepts for this game and neither of them are winners then I think you can conclude that Nintendo simply has no idea what to do with this series. How much worse was the original concept for Prime 4 that they thought this was better? Again, I'd be very worried that we don't get a Prime 5. Goddamnit why is it this painful to be a Metroid Prime fan?

@Bolt_Strike Being a Metroid Prime fan has been rather hard work since 2009, it has to be said.

Sure, things took a bit of an upturn in 2023 when we got a superb remaster and the year after when we finally saw a glimpse of the new game. Still, that's a lot of years of nothing in between to temper the enthusiasm for what's to come.