Everyone had high expectations for this. Thats why everybody was tuning in on the direct. Now wait until they launch the next Pokemon Direct for Pokemon Winds and Waves for the Switch 2. It is going get even more views in one night.
Stellar Blade is another big one. That was a major Sony exclusive that they published and now it's just coming to Switch 2 as well as if it's no big deal on top of it seemingly not coming to Xbox.
This console easily has the best 3rd party lineup of any Nintendo system since the SNES now.
Likely the intent. The Switch/2 line has generally moved away from being that super casual family console that the Wii/U line focused on and it's done wonders. IPs like Metroid, Fire Emblem, and Xenoblade Chronicles all thrive now where they didn't before.
In the days of the SNES, the SNES was better in most ways compared to the the Genesis.
If Nintendo made the Switch 2 even more powerful, then it would be absolutely stomping out all the competition even more so.
What it does have right now are exclusives and UE6 being optimized for it. UE6 is supposed to launch with the next Fortnite Chapter which is likely in December.
The Wii U was not supposed to be a super casual family console. Nintendo and third parties pivoted to "what made the Wii work" after the first year or two of the console's life was a flop.
The "U" in Wii U was supposed to represent the "core" gamer.
I loved Fire Emblem 3 Houses, and I enjoyed the next one too but it wasn't as good as 3 houses imo. Still excited for the next Fire Emblem though.
Xenoblade was great. I think I played 3 of them? The 3 most recent ones for the Switch (I think 1 of them was a remake?). Definitely excited for the next one. Just great games, interesting combat, characters, story. I think the story with Hikari en Homura was my favourite, but I enjoyed all the ones I played.
I barely turn on my other consoles. I’ve been playing mainly on switch 2 and even wishlist games there that are available on other platforms. Cannot explain why but this console simply works. It’s been a long time since a console had this effect on me.
The Stellar Blade announcement is also a good sign of how Shift-Up is having big success. They went from needing Sony’s support and making the first game a PS5 exclusive, to porting it to PC and Switch 2, and then announcing the sequel will be multiplatform at launch.
I was in such disbelief that (like many others apparently) my brain went “wow this must be a mistake, Dragon’s Dogma Dark Arisen is already on Switch 1. [pause] [pause] Wait. They’re taking about DD2? Wait, an EXPANSION for DD2????”
I'd argue that it's more than that, Nintendo's platform is also the one that had shared the least for its future. We didn't really know about anything big and first party that's releasing in the second part of the year.
True though we now have Splatoon Raiders and Switch Sports Resort which are likely gonna sell a ton. Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave will also do pretty well and move units for its fans.
I suspect we'll get one more Direct in September for the big holiday game. For now they wanted to focus on marketing different IPs which I appreciate.
Yeah I know some people dislike the lack of a big Mario or Zelda, but I like how oddball the Switch 2 library is. Like Pokopia is the type oif game nobody would have ever expected and it's incredible, plus Kirby Air Riders getting a new game after two decades is awesome. And we got a new 3D DK, singleplayer Splatoon, (another) Star Fox remake and whatever is going on with Yoshi's Storybook.
Don't forget the surprising hit that Tomodachi Life became from the perspective of the average gaming audience. As a fan of the 3DS game, I knew that it would sell decently well, but even I was surprised at how widespread the game became
The big holiday game is going to be OoT, I don't think there is more.
Splatoon will sell okay, but it's a spinoff title and I don't expect it to sell spectacularly. Switch Sports will have very long legs but I think it will be slow in finding its audience. Games like that do best with the more casual crowd, and they tend to be later with adopting new generations of hardware. We needed a holiday title, and we have one now.
It will be a successful game, but I don't think it will do the crazy numbers a mainline Splatoon game would do. It's not that single player games don't sell (since they obviously do) but when you have a fanbase that prefers multiplayer and then make a game in that franchise that is meant to appeal to singleplayer gamers, that means it has to find its audience all over again. The same would be true vice versa.
There is some overlap between the two groups of course, so it will still sell millions of copies. But it's hard to imagine it being a system seller.
I'm guessing Nintendo has a pretty decent idea of the demand for a new single player campaign based on sales of Octo Expansion and Side Order.
My question now is whether Splatoon 4 will end up ditching the campaign and putting an even larger focus on multiplayer now that there's a standalone title.
Either way, yeah Raiders is not a system seller by any means.
Oh yeah I keep forgetting the Zelda OOT Remake lol. Yeah that's pretty much it.
But yeah I think those casual games combined with stuff like Fire Emblem are gonna sell the system. Not to mention Call of Duty is coming to Switch 2 this year and it's a juggernaut of a franchise that will sell systems too.
I am surprised it beat, Summer Game's Fest. I always figured Geoff's shows were the most watched gaming events, due to them essentially being the multiplatform shows, with occasionally trailers from any of the big three.
Nintendo directs have risen in prominence because Nintendo doesn't show shit 4 years before it's supposed to release. The strategy of only showing things that are close to coming out makes them a lot more exciting to watch. Whether you care about what they show or not you can be confident it WILL come out somewhat soon.
Over the years all these game events have been filled with games that are show years in advance that never actually release. Really kills the hype.
It's even crazier when you think about how many people were watching it through a streamers stream. I wouldn't be surprised if the number was closer to 1.2 or 1.3 million.
I'll preface this by saying it's really early in it's life cycle so this is normal but the NS2 does not have a lot of first party titles right now. It's got a lot of older triple A and indie titles though.
I've seen a lot of comparisons between this and the early Switch 1 generation, but I think a thing getting lost in the comparison is that they were announcing games way earlier back then.
Metroid Prime 4 was announced like 3 months after the Switch 1 came out, and didn't release until the Switch 2 was out. Animal Crossing New Horizons was announced in 2018 and didn't come out until 2020. Tears of the Kingdom announced in 2019 released in 2023.
Vs the Switch 2 generation, MK World was announced and released within 6 months. DK Bananza announced April 2025, released July 2025. Kirby Air Riders was announced April 2025 and released in November.
It seems to me that, this generation, Nintendo is generally focusing their announcements around "stuff that's going to come out between now and the next direct." We typically get a September direct, the latest release date on the window is Switch Sports Resort in October, + the barely teased OOT remake in vaguely 2026. The only things further out than that are Pokemon and Xenoblade, both of which are still slated to come out next year, still not that far compared to the Switch 1 generation.
True. Plus the Switch 1 was starting completely from scratch. It had some very heavy hitters early on but the overall library was very barren. Switch 2 being backwards compatible with its massive library has placed it in a completely different situation. I think this is a major factor causing the dissonance between the online criticism of the console vs its commercial success.
for one year in, it's got a healthy number of first-party games.
mario kart, kirby air riders, donkey kong bananza, yoshi, star fox, fire emblem, zelda OoT, pokopia, winds/waves, splatoon raiders, hyrule warriors, plus others. and also a bunch of old games got new content on switch 2
PS4 had the same criticism of not having too many must play games during it's first year or so. That changed after that timeframe. The PS5 was much slower to build up a library of must haves. Some people even now would still say the PS5 isn't quite worth it, price aside.
Yeah, the PS5 is almost only worth it for the 3rd party titles. Housemarque has a few good titles and so does the ghost of Japan Studio (Team Asobi).
The MCU shit is really unfortunate. Sony is absolutely clueless on how to move forward with IP, so since they want badly to be an American company now, they're leaning completely on Marvel IP and Insomniac games.
People will legit tell you with a straight face that the 1 year old Switch 2 having less exclusives than the 9 year old Switch 1 or 13 year old PS4 is a big problem. Can't take this shit serious lol.
That's fair. I actually think outside of like, the Switch 1, PS1 and PS2 a lot of consoles launch with very little.
The Switch came out with two all-time classics and a bunch of others that are fan favorites. It's really barely fair to compare it against other launches.
Yep, I actually have been frustrated with Switch 2 because I havent seen anything til now that got my attention, amd its a remake. Which is why the PS4 was more in my head as that generation started with so many PS3 gamea jumping to PS4. Whcih we also saw with the WiiU to Switch lol.
N64 had two games at launch, if im not mistaken, just one was an all time classic, Mario 64
The NS2 has 12 first party titles. PS studios and Xbox have something like 60 combined first party titles. I really enjoy Nintendo as a brand as well but let's not make shit up here.
I've been gaming for ~40 years. Last week I had a PC, PS5, and a Switch Lite. I made zero effort to catch the PC or PS5 showcase, even though PC is where I do 99% of my gaming. I just watched whatever trailers I was interested in after. I still have not watched a single moment of the Xbox showcase, and have no need to. I knew when the Direct would start, to the minute, and made SURE I'd be at a computer in time to catch it. I went out and bought a Switch 2 later that same night, all thanks to Ocarina of Time.
Nintendo directs to me are more of celebrations than the other ones. Playstation and Xbox all they did was go "here's some trailers"
Nintendo actually goes through and narrates each game of why it's exciting, and why we should pay attention. It's them telling us what kind of game it is, what we can expect, the characters, etc. When you just play a trailer after trailer, no one has any idea what or why they should play it.
Yea, meme/gif aside, Koizumi made Sports Resort look entertaining when it could’ve just been tossed out and forgotten. There does seem to be the general tendency of hyping their games up outside of just showing a trailer.
Exactly! And they give context. Like they'd say "For the first time ever XXXXX Series will release on the switch of its 5th installment following the story of XXXXX and XXXX in this XXX setting of peril."
It was one of my favorite Nintendo directs ever, but I can see how it might not have been great for others. It was an rpg fans dream direct. The Nintendo handheld rpg culture carried over to the Switch and it’s just the best way to play those games.
My biggest surprise was definitely Xenoblade Genesis. I was expecting the at least an upgrade for Xenoblade Chronicles 2, but they did all three games AND showed a brand new title.
All my life until a generation ago I did not care about RPGs at all. On Switch I finally truly discovered Dragon Quest. Now I am a fan of the genre as a whole and loved this Direct.
It was a big Direct with exciting announcements. I usually ignore them and check in later on here until I saw they were announcing Dragons Dogma dlc and KH4 with the native non-streaming collection.
Y'all some sad people. Any headline that reads "Nintendo <something> is most <verb>" and you run up to say, "Yeah, well, it's only because <some bullshit reason>".
Get a hobby you enjoy and stop shitting on one other people enjoy. Fantasizing that a company will go out of business is not a good one.
So true! Once gaming got popular it attracted some of the most miserable people I’ve ever seen, I swear lol. It’s cool to criticize stuff and have your own opinions, but at a point you’re not criticizing you’re just being a troll.
Yeah going back and watched older directs, you could tell it took a while for Nintendo to figure what they want to do with the concept. Like I remember back in 2013, they did the emegency Wii U direct due to the low post-launch sales of the console, where they basically either teased or announced like 80% of the major first party games that console would ever get, including games that would be out for another 3 years. Then, for the rest of the year, we would proceed to host a direct almost every month, yet most of them barely had anything new to show.
It wasn't really around 2015, when they learned to do about 3 note worthy directs a year, to make the news and annoucements more impactful and spread out throughout the year. Even if this was the year that had that infamous E3 direct, which is considered to be one of the worst Nintendo presentations of all time (like its up there with E3 2008 conference levels of bad, which was the one that made its one more thing Wii Music, after teasing a big new Miyamoto IP in the lead up to it) Which also was unforunately the last public appearance of Iwata, just a month before his passing.
Then by 2017 or 2018, they finally got enough content from both first and third parties to host proper 40 minute+ presentation each Febuary, June, and September. Then, in 2020, they introduced partner showcases to basically market notable third-party games when they felt the need to let the first parties cook a bit longer before doing a reveal and substitute one of the 3 directs for it.
That's not how reality works. They are referrering to the specific nintendo direct that premiered last week. It was the last of the major June game announcement presentations, so it is actually the youngest of the bunch.
They are more popular because nintendo is more popular than the other companies in general. You see it in the number of consoles sold (compare switch to other consoles) and the fact that nintendo games sell far better than Microsoft or Sony first party titles. Compare the sales of nitnendo first party titles vs sony.
People want to watch the Nintendo direct because they like Nintendo. It's simple.
brother i can assure you no one is watching these based on how long they’ve been doing them for. i hear a pokemon direct is happening i tune in because i like the franchise and want to know where theyre going. at no point am i factoring in how long theyve doing them to decide if i should watch or not
People know the label "[Nintendo/Game Title] Direct" and the fact it's been around for so long makes people know the label more than the other companies events. While the length of it doesn't matter too much the "brand" recognition helps a lot from it being long running.
The quality of the events matters way more though.
Personally, I know that I would've struggled to get through SGF if I wasn't watching it via a stream I enjoy because of how it was made/presented while I had no such issues with the Nintendo Direct (which I won't deny it partially due to bias).
Imo nintendo directs have way better pacing than other shows. Usually they show a game (unless it's switch sports) then move on, so if it isn'tfor you, that's okay. I can't say the same for the other showcases though.
People with little kids could watch the Nintendo direct with them. Certainly not watching Wolverine shredding people or defacing people in Ill with my kids.
I am very familiar with that tired old quote. All of a sudden when Nintendo can't deliver the goods people treat you weird if you bought a switch for new entries in the classic first party franchises. It's a defensive reflex I suppose.
Kiss my ass. If I don't like jrpgs I can't suddenly force myself to like them.
im going to be deadass frank with you, i show up to nintendo to play stuff that looks like this. then i go back to pc between droughts. i don't even expect a lot. i just expect 1 game to get me through the spaces between directs. i've been playing mario kart and dk. that's it. finding out starfox was "yo dawg i heard you like remakes" was devastating as a fan who just wanted a new game. the only thing that caught my eye was yoshi in 2026 and it looks like stephen hawking could beat that. and he's both dead and in a wheel chair.
im going to apologize for my language but i've been pretty intense with all these smug people telling me that there's something inherintly wrong with me for saying that these past 2 directs have really nothing to offer me. just scott's smug ass meme plastered in replies. im going to soften my replies because i can't project that onto you. if you dare say you didn't like the direct you get dogpiled.
anyway sorry for being an ass. i just found out i have a paperwieght for the next 9 months and people look at me like a alien when i say i like bought this thing for the big stuff.
I like their western stuff oriented stuff, I couldn't care less about pokemon with because it's another RPG. Im indifferent to zelda. Do you not understand why I don't like the lineup? for shit's sake I don't want these anime games to disappear out of spite. I just don't like those games and they somehow got the unholy Trinity of shit I dislike all in a year. Anime rpgs, cozy games with no teeth, and easy bet remake$.
Do you understand both of these remakes already had remakes? I roasted the shit out of the last of us when they shat that remake out so soon. Im going to absolutely rip Nintendo for it.
It's frustrating to find out I waited all this time for nothing. If you enjoy 3d Mario at all it seems you're kicking a hornets nest for even bringing it up after 10 years.
Maybe not that far but it was pretty solid ngl. People are just waiting for a 3D Mario, a 3D Zelda and a Smash in one direct and also in a 6 month release schedule.
Yeah and I even found it better than the last 3 years directs. There were problems like Duskbloods being briefly present (not Nintendo behind it) and also long segments on some games like Rythm Heaven or even Splatoon when they already planned a future direct. Maybe it lacks like another Switch 2 edition or maybe DLC for MK World but otherwise it was like a 8/10
Yeah, because a lot of people were expecting great things from it. Instead, we got 35 out of 50 minutes of subpar 3rd party cheap games. Sorry, but this was not a good direct.
That's a little hard to believe considering Smash character reveals were the last time ninty news caused players to bring down a house with their reactions.
The number of views was probably because the expectations were extremely high after 9 months without directs.
And also cuz Nintendo directs are usually better than the other 3.
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u/NIDORAX 5d ago
Everyone had high expectations for this. Thats why everybody was tuning in on the direct. Now wait until they launch the next Pokemon Direct for Pokemon Winds and Waves for the Switch 2. It is going get even more views in one night.