Why The July 20th Nintendo "Direct" Mini was Such a Baffling Disappointment
The Reasons We All Foolishly Hoped for Something Big on July 20th
7/21/20
At 12:00 AM on July 20th, we received a Tweet officially from Nintendo stating that there would finally be a Direct in only 10 hours. Though, they said it came with a catch, but we couldn’t grasp how big of a catch that would be until we finally saw the direct. As fans, we should not have expected anything from this because it clearly wasn’t anything big. They claimed that it would be a small presentation of a handful of games that had already been announced. Then again, because of this, we had the right to expect everything. The words “already been announced” in the minds of our wildest pipe dreams meant Metroid Prime 4, Breath of the Wild 2, and possibly Pikmin 4 or a Pikmin 3 port. They had all been announced, through teaser trailers or verbal confirmations, and we knew one of these had to be slated for a 2020 release. Nintendo was going up against new consoles from PlayStation and Xbox this holiday, so they had to be packing something big to push Switch units. It would be completely rational for people to expect at least one of these games or a bigger holiday title. Alas, we were disappointed, but not only for this reason.
Before we get too deep into this essay, it’s worth pointing out that us fans hadn’t had a full direct in over ten months. To put this into perspective, while Directs were still active in 2019, we received one every 3-4 months, the last one being on September 4th. Naturally, we’ve been hoping for a big Direct ever since. For the past three years, we received a direct within the first two months of the year. Presumably, Nintendo’s excuse for this was our Mini Direct on March 26th. It’s debatable, but probably the biggest thing we got in that Direct was Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition: a Wii U port of a New 3DS port of a Wii game from ten years ago. Since then, there were Direct rumors for one in May, but nothing too serious or confirmed.
Next, people were speculating that Nintendo would stream a Direct that was set for E3, but it might not have been made or even in planning when the virus struck. Now we knew that there had to have been a Direct set to release at least two months before September; Mario’s 35th anniversary. One thing rumored more heavily than even this Direct is the 3D Mario Remasters collection, which has been speculated since March, to celebrate said anniversary. We presumed they had to be announced at least two months earlier, but a few YouTubers I saw made a good point when I was doing my research. Thomas from “SwitchStop” said that most games require many trailers; teaser, reveal, gameplay, etc. A port or a remaster of a game only needs one trailer with the primary purpose of showing the graphics. Another part of this rumor was a Wii U port of Super Mario 3D World. He said that all they would have to show off for that game would be a new character and/or new levels they planned on adding. Since it’s a port from yet another HD system, the graphics wouldn’t really need to be discussed.
All of this aside, it’s still smart to announce games at least two months before their official release, even if they are ports. If these 3D Mario remasters are happening this September to celebrate the anniversary, then these will be our only first party Nintendo titles coming this year. If Nintendo doesn’t want to be completely overshadowed by the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X this holiday, then they have to have a holiday title for the Switch. The general consensus seems to be that these games could just be sufficient enough for a big holiday title this year. People love Mario for a variety of obvious reasons, and one of the big things that the Switch did was draw the attention of many hardcore Nintendo fans. These fans may have missed out on the GameCube, Wii, and Wii U, so now is their chance to experience these titles for the first time with their new system.
We’ve now established that if a Mario direct does release and these games are pushed back further than September to be holiday titles, Nintendo could still push units this season. There’s no reason I dispute this, but it may not be within the widest margin of what the company and its investors could’ve hoped for, especially going off what Nintendo said. They said that because conditions are much better in Japan, the coronavirus has yet to infect any releases of major Nintendo games. This is very off putting, because maybe Nintendo truly never had much planned for this year and it could have been an even worse version 2018. If this is what they’ve planned, then the minor affections of COVID is probably bringing them down even further. Though, the Series X and PS5 were announced for this holiday, which probably stressed Nintendo out. I assume if the systems had been set for this holiday prior to COVID, Nintendo would’ve planned better and worked harder on a big system seller like Breath of the Wild 2. Another thing that confused me about the lack of a Nintendo Direct on the 20th was that Paper Mario, the only game that followed “the COVID schedule” for a Nintendo game, was announced two months prior. Two months is pretty short for a game window, but pre-orders went up the day that the announcement trailer was stealth-dropped. This gave everyone the opportunity to pre-order it as they were hyping it up so much before its release. Nintendo never came out and gave us the pre-order numbers, but people still had an opportunity to buy the game for what I think is about the normal amount of time.
In hindsight, there were a few reasons to not expect a Direct on Monday. One of the many reasons we did expect a Direct were the two Twitter accounts that looked to be addressed to Nintendo’s official emails. The email format went “ml(certain amount of asterisks).n*******.**.**”. Most people thought that every account had close to the same name, and were addressed to “nintendo.co.jp” and were just accounts to hold domain names. These two accounts were supposedly for the Super Mario 35th Anniversary and F-Zero. This led people to expect a new F-Zero game as well. Both accounts were started in March 2020, which is right around the time rumors of the 3D Mario Remasters started to hit. Then again, I assumed that they could have just been emails for something like “mltrollin6969.nboobies.co.uk”, and it appears that at least the F-Zero account was. Next is my personal opinion about the lack of very major new IPs to make games for on the Switch. I feared Nintendo had put out too many games even in its first two years and by the time more sequels were developed for said games, they might as well be launch titles for the next console. The final reason would be when Nintendo came out and said they were planning to get rid of the Direct format relatively soon. Of course this meant within the next two years or so, but big Directs would probably be less and less likely leading up to their cancelation.
Overall, this has been a very confusing chain of rumors and news to follow. I think it’s fair to say that I myself have been playing my Switch much more than I usually do ever since the beginning of the quarantine. Every two months or so I find myself just dying of hype for a Nintendo game I’ve discovered. I’ve been about as invested in Nintendo news as someone who doesn’t use Twitter could be, and I’ve been desperate. Of course they could stealth drop a full forty minute Direct at any second now, but I hate to get my hopes up. The wait hasn’t been fun, but eventually we’ll see it. The rekindling of childlike wonder and all that is good in the world: a new full-length Nintendo Direct. Until then, we wait. As Joseph Campbell once said; “we must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.”
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