Nintendo To Host 'Management Briefing Session' Next Month, Days After Mario's 35th Anniversary

I do like Business Mario. He looks like he’s moved up the plumbing chain and now owns a series of businesses.

Don't read anything into it - it's just business-speak for hookers and big bags of coke.

Salt... grains there of

Management Briefing Session = boring marketing talk about the next quarter. The tweet even has the answer written into it, that there aren't any new announcements lol

I've been hearing / seeing a lot of rumors about some sort of event in the next week or so, before the 24th. I know Paper Mario was a stealth announcement, but what's the typical lead time for the Big N between 'hey, there's an announcement coming' and 'announcement'?

@TG16_IS_BAE Yeah, but the implication is that the announcement(s) would take place before the management meeting.

If I hear something as vague as Management Briefing Session at my work my heads goes to redundancies and pay cuts...

If there is a big holiday game beyond pikmin, i put all my chips on it being announced no later than end of September. That Would give whatever it may be Just enough time to generate hype and hammer on marketing. Or, it’s just pikmin and a few other smaller titles like bravely default and new Pokémon snap which is extremely likely

@Crockin I think we'll see that rumoured Direct this week to be honest. Assuming this "Management Briefing Session" is when they'll review internally their plans for the holiday season etc. then they don't want that to be where leaks come from.

Alternatively, they might just not have anything up their sleeve...

I’m not sure why people are so excited about remasters. I’d prefer something new.... And there’s no Nintendo titles dated other than Pikmin DX.

If there is any Nintendo Direct this month I will lick 100 Nintendo Switch cartridges.

@shazbot The same day sometimes. But tgis getting to be a bit of a joke tbh. There were so many rumours about 1 today but that is clearly not happening

If this meeting is going to be About marketing etc for the upcoming holiday season then they need some games to market. Pikmin 3 deluxe just won’t cut it. There must be a direct before this! Has to be. Otherwise what the hell are they going to discuss?

Oh man, I hope Management Briefing Session is one of the titles in the Mario 35th Anniversary Collection of Remasters for Mario’s Anniversary.

@shazbot Where in the tweet is that implied?

@roboshort That’s pretty much all the system can handle. Something new would be nice, but it seems Nintendo is pretty dormant right now, so expect ports and shovelware in the meantime.

@frabbit I think at very least Pokémon snap is coming. I could see that being the November game tbh. Maybe they announce something this month, but multiple announcements in one month hasn’t really been a thing this year. But who knows

I wonder how was the situation at Kyoto as the location of Nintendo HQ during pandemic.

With regard to potential "stealth announcements", I personally think they are either A) very poorly thought-out planning and marketing and/or B) have been largely the result of the impact of COVID-19 on development. This simply isn't how the gaming industry promotes its upcoming products (at least, not until this year, with no major industry shows, still no prices revealed for the PS5 or XBox Series X, and a remake of Pikmin 3 and...that's it...headlining Nintendo's holiday lineup with scarcely more than 90 days until Black Friday).

There's a reason the industry has always hyped its holiday season games up starting around June: public awareness and the fact that people need a sufficient heads up in order to budget for a given product. "Stealth" announcements/releases don't allow for that, and can turn out to be disastrous (look no further than the Sega Saturn's surprise early launch). A release as big as a "Mario All-Stars 2"-type compilation deserves a lot more lead time than a week or even a month.

I could also mention the fact that in a critical year (despite superb sales numbers for Animal Crossing) the Switch's first-party release frequency has taken a nosedive, and we're three-quarters of a year removed from the last full-scale Direct. This "management briefing session" may be the direct result of that, as well as the fact that Nintendo's push toward diversifying its portfolio into mobile gaming and theme parks has left its console division (meaning its core audience) high and dry just when the Switch needed extra resources the most. There's even the possibility that Nintendo's internal focus has already shifted away from the Switch entirely toward a new console to try and close the technological gap (at least somewhat) with Sony and Microsoft. If that turns out to be the case it will leave a bitter taste in a lot of gamers' mouths who remember the similar handling of the Wii U.

In any case, this isn't the same Nintendo from "back in the day" or even the reign of Iwata and Reggie. I'm not forecasting doom and gloom, but the company is definitely facing some serious challenges both now and in the months and years ahead, and it remains to be seen how the "new guard" will handle them.

Also it’s worth noting that there’s been an announcement every month since Animal Crossing came out, so I would imagine that trend will continue with some kind of announcement in September

I honestly cannot see the reason to get excited about it.
As stated in the article 'no new products, services etc." will be discussed during the session.'
So I don't know what people are expecting.
What's shocking is that there are no games from Nintendo in August and nothing announced for September yet.
Only a remastered game from an IP that is good but not the best for an October release.
On the top of all that, we are very close to the festive season and there are no news about what Nintendo has for November and December.
Meanwhile, MS and Sony are releasing their next gen consoles.
Nintendo needs to wake up quickly if they want to grab people's attention and keep the hype for their games until Xmas.

I don't even care anymore. Announce a direct or don't announce one, I'm not going to expect anything.

@roboshort remasters is better than nothing. I'm sure most would prefer something new but if that isn't an option than a remaster is better than spending fall playing third party switch games.

Never keep your hopes in check. Always hope for the best. Always keep your expectations low though so as never to be disappointed. Nintendo needs something other than Pikmin for the holidays. A Mario collection of some sort would be day 1 for me. Pikmin is an eventual purchase for me.

Anyone who has ever attended a management meeting will know how boring they are. They usually start off with some back slapping, then address areas for improvement, then end with some motivational hoo ha for the next year. (They sandwich the relevant bit lol)

How about, this is just coincidence, and everyone here is grasping at shreds. How about that one?

@NintendoGameBoi I would very much like to see that. Share video if there isn't one!

There is a rumour of a previous rumour, but in all fairness that was based on another rumour that was rumoured six months ago, based on undisclosed SKU listings from Amazon and my uncle who does work for Nintendo, that at some point in time there will be a Nintendo direct, although I will tell you take all this with a grain of salt, as it could be total rubbish.

Disney merger.

@bimmy-lee
Hello. 😀
Long time no see.

@Madder128 i give them 3 years

@Lordplops would love to see this as a Feature Article, please NL make it happen!

BORING. Where’s the beef, Nintendo?

I wouldn't expect anything major to come from this

Here's the reality of working from home in Japan. This article explains it quite well. This is probably a big reason Nintendo has been largely silent since "working from home" is NOT part of the Japanese culture compared to other parts of the world.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Datawatch/Japan-lags-the-US-and-Europe-in-working-from-home

What game is the Mario wearing a suit artwork from?

Management Briefing Session, in order of likeliness:

• update on covid ways of working
• update on covid business impact
• redundancies

I appreciate we are light on game announcements from Nintendo, but I truly do not understand how anyone can read into this and predict/expect announcements before it!

@nessisonett Post Covid interview attire Mario?

Rule of thumb for the year 2020: Stay safe and don't get your hopes up.

I'd like to think we'll get some major announcement just prior to this, because Nintendo isn't looking good coming into the end of this year. New Xbox and Playstation are coming out in a few months and all Nintendo has coming for Switch is Pikmin 3. I'm definitely excited for that, but they're gonna need something with wider appeal for the holiday season.

@roboshort I suspect most of us would prefer new games all the time. But I see no problem in getting excited for remasters. I know for me personally, many of those games I have not played in quite some time. Some folks may not have the consoles any longer to play those games. And some completely new to Nintendo have never played them. So there is a market for remasters.

And it's not like we're talking about just any ole games. It's potentially some of the greatest 3D platformers of all time being made available on a newer console and to an expanded audience

Sounds like a "reorg" happening in the wake of layoffs.

@bimmy-lee It'll be a new spin-off game: Hotel Mario Management Simulator. The Very Important Meeting add-on will be part of the first DLC pack.

Long time no see!

The last time Nintendo had an meeting like this that wasn't a quarterly or annual financial results briefing was in March 2015, when Nintendo announced their partnership with DeNA to begin developing mobile games. That was also the same conference when the NX was announced as Nintendo's next gaming platform.

I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo announced a new business partnership in this meeting.

@Dang69
Why would Nintendo be laying people off when they are witnessing some their best financial results ever at the moment? They even tried to avoid layoffs when the 3DS was underperforming and when the Wii U was bombing.

@johnvboy I heard that rumour too...

"no new products, services etc."
All I want is an 8K dock, 4k in handheld mode, A 4TB drive, Mario Galaxy 3, F-Zero 2020, all by Xmas.

@westman98 please have nothing to do with tencent please have nothing to do with tencent please having nothing to do with tencent please

@NintendoGameBoi this comment is gold 😂

Miyamoto retires.

This is not a speculation or a guess.

@PikaPhantom
Nintendo is already partnered with Tencent to distribute the Switch in China.

Just a coincidence.

@PikaPhantom,

At this point I wouldn't be surprised if they sold the entire company to Tencent. They are a..holes.

@CasePB Hopes to me are like dreams and you can't expect them all to come true. If you do the lottery you hope you will win but you don't expect to win.
I hope Nintendo surprise us and will release plenty of games by the end of the year. I expect they will release maybe one other after Pikmin 3.

Gotta love Nintendo. There are two new advanced consoles coming out this year, and Nintendo can still make headlines amidst all that and keep everyone on their toes just on a rumor about a possible remaster of "old" games.

I’d just like to see anything that’s new in Pikmin deluxe. So dumb how they only showed old footage

@westman98 maybe because when that happened Iwata was the president of Nintendo, we dont know the mentality of Shuntaro Furukara, is look very bisiness- like to me, capable of doing lay-off.

@Giancarlothomaz
It's still very unusual for any company to engage in layoffs when they are performing at their all-time highs.

And while Furukawa is not Iwata, the rest of Nintendo's executive board has remained largely the same since Iwata's death, so I don't anticipate that Nintendo's leadership has changed that much since then, at least not to the point where they go from not laying off people during big financial losses to laying people off during big financial success.

Have people not learned that Nintendo could announce the Mario Collection for a release a week later and it would still sell like hotcakes? Mario is an incredibly well known brand, and Nintendo doesn't need to do a lot of promoting for it to sell well.

@Crockin I hope not, but I fear it may happen eventually.

@westman98 I know that already but I don't want to see the relationship progress any further

@WiltonRoots,

You want the moon on a stick fella.

Mario's 35th anniversary game might be Super Mario Sunshine 2

@AtlanteanMan That's a lot of words for absolutely nothing. The part in which I love the most is how you say that park and other ventures are not giving extra resources when those are licenses.

@TG16_IS_BAE Probably, but Nintendo says stuff like that even if they plan on announcing something. I’m pretty sure that they do it a lot.

There are a few companies doing restructuring of the management structure now. The enforced working practices of Covid-19 have shown them new ways.

@Anti-Matter - Hey Anti! We should do some island hopping soon in AC. I still need a peach.

@Tyranexx - Haha, yeah, and the Very Important Zoom Meeting DLC can’t be far behind that. Hope you’re well, it’s been a busy summer with the kids and the house.

@WiltonRoots - I’m also gonna need some Zelda remasters to play before BOTW2 at Christmas, and at least 35 remastered Mario Games by his anniversary.

NIntendolife really has to go to great lengths to find new to report since there aren't any games for the Switch. Heck, even one of their front page articles is about a game that is confirmed to not be coming to Switch. Nintendo has a tremendously successful platform and is doing absolutely nothing with it. I thought focusing on one platform was supposed to give us more games, but the drought is worse than it has ever been.

@westman98 It's insane to me that people are saying that Nintendo will lay-off. Not only that but Furukawa was trained to be a sucessor to Iwata as we know from ages that Kimishima was just a substitute of Iwata due to his death.

@Ambassador_Kong Your post is absurd. I have been buying games on Switch during the entire year with new indie and third party games. Stop playing just Nintendo games and expand your horizons, which even with Nintendo itself, they have launched a lot of games this year, with Clubhouse Games and Paper Mario Origami King on the last two months.

And to think that "not focusing in two platforms" would mean more games is to have zero understanding of development. 3DS games are 240p, much smaller scale, have less staff, budget, have in many times the same people working on those projects and console projects, etc. This thinking makes no sense due to this, as HD development focus will make things much above than developing for a hardware like 3DS.

@UmbreonsPapa I have nothing against remasters either and will probably pick this up if it comes out. I just don't really get the level of excitement especially when it's still just a rumor. And I can play all these games on my WiiU aside from Sunshine. If the compilation is All Stars level and not simply HD remasters, that'll build my excitement, though.

Last year had so many exclusive new titles/remakes amongst some ports, and this year has been kinda weak for first party titles with Xenoblade, Good Job, Tokyo Mirage Sessions, Animal Crossing, Paper Mario, and 51 Classics. Though I guess that's to be expected with the coronavirus.

@bimmy-lee Doing well, similarly staying busy lol. Sounds like everything is going great on the Bimmy front! Just crazy like about everything else.

@westman98 Might just be a "reorg." I'm in the US so I always associate Sept with a layoff month and a BIG meeting to reorg. Sept is the end of Q3 and adjustments happen to get Q4 looking extra financially "balanced" heading into the end of the year. In Japan I think that's the end of Q2. Now as for layoffs, I mostly meant from my experience "sounds like." Sometimes those big meeting are even schedule prior to knowing the scope of it all, how little or big of a hit something will take. Nintendo is doing amazing right now, yes. Nintendo also HAS BEEN a company that has presidents taking half salary cuts etc to avoid layoffs. But since Iwata has passed, since Reggie has left I feel like things "feel" a little different there in how they are running things. So why might there be layoffs despite this year being profitable? They might be future proofing and reorging to account for the management flow of things. EA has had massive layoffs in prior years to future proof earnings. Because here's the thing...COVID isn't going away. COVID may not be "manageable" until late NEXT year. I dunno, all I know is if my US company was scheduling something like this, we'd ALL BE A CHITTER CHATTER in worried conversation around it. If their internal forecast is causing big concern around release schedules, next gen consoles, the heat fading from AC AFTER this holiday season...delays in new hardware, I dunno, I'd be worried if I was at that company and hearing of this.

@Nemesis666 You're right and wrong in your response, because Nintendo has been lacking in outreach to securing unique experiences for 3rd party games. I see a lot of stuff I either skipped in previous generations or already had my fill of...so when Nintendo fails to release a bunch of stuff, the 3rd party end, ends up unable to make up for it. And on the Indie end? 2018 for indies on Switch was fire. Just totally awesome. 2019 and 2020 have been a lot tamer, and the biggest indie game rn, Fall Guys, is not on Switch. Yet another Ps4 game. No ill will against Nintendo lacking in releases with the trouble the pandemic has caused...but like most things in life, when you don't take care of a lot of "personal issues" during the goodtimes, once something bad comes around and up ends the tea table, all the other little problems congeal into a larger one. In this case broken joycon and a drought of new experiences. Look at Ps4's release schedule this year? Completely full and varied. Nintendo is a joke with it's overpriced 3rd party ports of old games, with the content being minimal to playable on the card without a download. Broken games like Outerworlds, etc. For those of us who have been launch window adopters of the Switch...there really isn't much being released of great appeal.

@Dang69
Your speculation don't seem based in reality and reeks of the classic "Switch will fall off a cliff when PS5/XSX are released" doom-mongering. Nintendo is a highly conservative 5000+ employee company that is currently experiencing its best financial results ever. Their biggest enemy is not the PS5/XSX but rather the danger of Covid and its impact on their work environment.

If a Nintendo was actually going to lay off a ton of people, they'd do it quietly and not as a public event like any smart company.

@Dang69 couldn't have said it better. Nintendo has released games this year, but none have been very appealing. Third party is a mixed bag of broken (Outer Worlds), old (released years ago on other platforms), or just fine but not up to the same quality as the bigger console releases.

The 3DS received a lot of third party support composed of games designed specifically for the system, but there has been very little of this for the Switch. It's odd that a system that sells so well get so little support from developers. Yes, there are games released on it every week, but 90% of those games were slapped together by tiny developers looking to make a quick buck.

Compare this to the PS4 which has managed to have a great release year even though there is a pandemic. We aren't seeing releases on the Switch, it's because there wasn't enough planned and when the PS5 and NextBox release, it will only get worse.

My auntie works at Nintendo, and she tells me this is the megabomb.

@westman98 Your just giving me a fanboy response. "If a Nintendo was actually going to lay off a ton of people, they'd do it quietly and not as a public event like any smart company." Define public? All these meetings get leaked, smarter to announce them somewhat publicly as it makes it seem like there is nothing to hide. This could be a meeting preceding potential layoffs, a reaction to layoffs, etc. The point of my post was more in reaction to the article than anything else. "However, the 16th September date has sparked a renewed interest in a potential Mario anniversary announcement." I'm reacting to that. And this article, nudge nudge "maybe it's about Mario games. Switch will continue to be successful for now, but COVID will be an issue for a long time, right? Switch has added pressure of new consoles on the horizon stealing the "mind share" away from it (the conversations themselves, taking up mindshare and drawing sales). Nintendo is doing great now. Been great for years now. But if they are having project management issues in the this new working world, and Nintendo seems to be having them, plus as economies continue to shrink around the world and disposable income gets more precious, software schedules slump, theme park delays (sales forecasts being adjusted for revenue from the park, merch, etc), animated feature potential delay (again, sales forecasts being adjusted for all the tie-in merch) and potential new hardware gets delayed...yes layoffs are a possibility. A reorg is likely. This meeting might be anticipating that at the very least. Don't fanboy at me because I'm not saying something bright and shiny.

@Dang69
I'm still not seeing any actual reason why Nintendo is going to lay people off. Covid has hurt Nintendo's workflow due to their struggle to transition to WFH, but their business has been booming. If the economy does indeed completely collapse and Covid becomes 10X worse, thereby destroying people's purchasing power and causing Nintendo's financial performance to collapse, then sure, layoffs may happen if Furukawa is indeed the "anti-Iwata" EA-esque executive that some people claim, but none of that has happened, which means Nintendo isn't going to talk about that next month.

What will most likely happen is that Nintendo will announce a new business partnership, similar to their partnership with DeNA (to make mobile games), Universal (to build the Nintendo theme parks), or Tencent (to officially distribute the Switch in China). At worst, Nintendo will mention that their theme park plans at Universal have been pushed back indefinitely for obvious reasons.

@beazlen1 I agree wholeheartedly. It's going to take more than Olimar and his Pikmin to get me hyped up.

@westman98 Again. I'm not saying they will, but I'm not saying it is unlikely either - this could be a managerial "townhouse" to discuss that, I don't know. I'm just relaying personal work experiences from the somewhat similarly structured industry I've worked in since 2007, as well as things I've witnessed directly in the games industry. Also "furloughing" people and dumping insane amounts of work on your retained staff is all the rage theses days, may that's more likely. Maybe all this is, is a reorg without layouts so they manage all the projects better in the WFH situation. Nintendo seems to be failing hard at that.

@Dang69
How is mass public layoffs supposed to improve Nintendo's WFH situation?

Covid or not, Nintendo isn't going to publicly fire a ton of people on Sep 16th.

@westman98 jesus christ dude, i'm not saying that