Gadgetory

- Nintendo has been a powerhouse the last couple E3s, and hopefully this year will be no different, but there's a lot more unknowns this year than the past couple. And there's a few things to kinda just be a little wary of. One of them is the fact that Nintendo does have a habit of relying on their Nintendo Directs to announce news whenever they want, so there's a lot of stuff that we might want to see at this year's E3, but could always be saved for a later announcement. And one of the biggest rumors and things that people have been wanting confirmation on is whether or not we are seeing a new Switch this year. There've been a lot of rumors ever since the end of last year regarding that Nintendo might be working on some new model of the Switch. So, the popular rumor of this new Switch being some time late this year, does that mean we're going to get an official announcement at E3? Probably not, or at least, I don't think so. I think Nintendo really approaches E3 with the logic of it being a game-focused event, they want to announce new titles, they wanna focus on games they've already talked about and do more in-depth dives on them. I mean that, after all, is a huge focus of the Nintendo Treehouse, is doing sort of, like, interactive Let's Plays and showing people gameplay. I don't think they see that as a time to focus on hardware. I mean, even when the original Switch was announced, that was not an E3 event, that was its own separate press conference, both for the initial reveal and for the more in-depth dive into how it works. So, I think they're gonna follow a very similar logic for a potential new Switch model, where it's gonna be something that we find out closer to the holiday season, later in the summer, maybe sometime in August. However, if it does get an official reveal at this E3, it would certainly be one of the bigger surprises that they could pull out for this year. After all, one of the things that's a little awkward about this one, is I don't feel like we really have a super strong game title going into into this E3. The past few years, they've always focused on one major game that has wide audience appeal, whether that was Zelda, Mario, or Smash Bros. This time around, we've got a lot of good games coming out, at least good franchises, but nothing that I feel like is an entire show winner. Fire Emblem's coming out just a couple months after E3. Pokemon is getting its own dedicated Direct just before E3. And while Animal Crossing is an amazing game and I think gonna be one of the stronger things they can focus on, it doesn't have quite the same huge appeal as those past titles. If Nintendo really wanted to come out this E3 swinging, I think definitely one of the strongest ways to do it, aside from a random resurrection of an old game franchise, would be to confirm the concept of a Switch Mini or even something that's further on the horizon. There are, after all, rumors of other, more powerful Switch models, or even a whole new system in development for some time in 2020. So, if that news got confirmed, once again, big surprise. I don't think it's gonna happen, but it'd be awesome. As for other non-game announcements that Nintendo could be making, there's some that I think are pretty likely and some not so much. On the unlikely side, there is of course their own service of Nintendo Switch Online, which the main purpose of right now is to play games online. Now, the added benefit of the service is you can play some select Nintendo games on your Switch, which is a cool little feature, but a lot of people complained that it feels very under-baked compared to what it could be, and I tend to agree. Now, the full memberships last a whole year, so a lot of them are gonna start going up in just a few months, so it's possible that way in advance, Nintendo could make some announcements about how they plan to improve the service. One of the most likely things being the addition other game systems aside from NES, like Game Boy or SNES. Will this be announced at E3? I doubt it, it could maybe be very lightly touched on, but I see them focusing on major announcements for that service closer to the time when it's been the one-year anniversary, so that everyone who signed up when it first went live has reasons to renew for another year instead of just giving it up. By the way, if you're looking for an easy and cool way to customize your Switch, take a look at these skins from today's sponsor, Dbrand. They are totally save to use on your Switch, on the JoyCons, and on on your dock. They come in a variety of different colors, and one of my favorite recent ones they've done are these matte black, they look awesome on the JoyCons. Check out the link down below for more info. As for other physical products, I don't see Nintendo focusing on controllers at all, accessories aren't really a big thing they deal with unless it's something that is extremely thematic for a specific game, like when they had the Pokeball controller for the last Pokemon Let's Go games. So, if there was any kind of controller, it would be something tied into one of the upcoming titles, something weird for Animal Crossing, even. I really doubt it, though. However, what we will likely see is of course Nintendo's long-running and successful collectibles, amiibo! It's been a habit of Nintendo to announce new amiibo at each E3, usually tying into one of the games that they have announced for that year or for something that's coming out very soon. Again, we've got a lot of major titles on the way later this year, so it wouldn't be surprising to see some confirmed amiibo designs for those titles, or even for something that they surprise announce at this E3. There's of course also Nintendo's foray into cardboard accessories with Nintendo Labo. I don't think we're gonna see any brand new Labo kits. I think the big focus right now is on the VR set that was recently released, and if there's anything tied to Labo at all, it's going to be more software updates for other games adding some kind of support for Labo VR. If there's gonna be anything Labo related at all, that's where I see it going, I really don't think we're gonna see any brand new kits. 'Course, the big focus for Nintendo at E3 is the games, and there's a lot that could be talked about this year. And like I mentioned earlier, I feel like there's not one singular huge title like there was the past couple years, but we have a few really strong ones to choose from, including new Fire Emblem, new Pokemon, although that it is getting its own Direct, and, of course, Animal Crossing. One game that a lot of people are really hoping to see this year is Metroid Prime 4 and I'm just not sure that's actually going to happen this year. We did get an announcement that it was being pushed back earlier this year, so as a result, the chances of actually seeing any kind of real major update, I'm just skeptical. Now, there is the change they might have something minor for it prepped, we might get some kind of update or maybe hopefully even just some kind of other hype trailer, something that just shows a little bit of what the gameplay could look like, even if it's not final. But whether or not we see anything at all, it's just very much up in the air right now. Now, an interesting recent bit of news is that there's been kind of a "leak" regarding GameStop listing 21 SKUs for unannounced Switch games, mostly likely in an anticipation of them being announced at E3. Now, something to keep in mind is that when you have SKUs like that for Nintendo Switch, it's not necessarily all first-party Nintendo stuff, this isn't the same thing as when Xbox announced, hey, we have 14 first-party titles coming to E3, this is just 21 games in general that have not been announced yet that are gonna be on the Switch. So this could be games coming from EA, Ubisoft, Square, third party companies that are making multiplatform stuff, but definitely some degree that should be some first-party content. As for what those games could be, honestly, anything at this point. There's a lot that Nintendo's already kinda ran through lately for releases on the Switch, things that have already been announced, but there's a lot more that could happen. We might be seeing some other revivals and sequels of older titles that haven't seen anything yet. There are, of course, a large number of different Mario franchise games that could be getting new entries like Mario Strikers, I hope, I wish, probably not, though, Mario Golf. Personally, I really hope to see an announcement of a new Golden Sun, that's been my wish basically every year. The math kinda checks out this time, though, it took nine years between two and three, so, you know, what's another nine years to make a fourth one? (chuckles) (sighs) Overall, Nintendo is definitely a mystery for this year's E3, I think it has a very good chance of going heavily in one direct or the other, being either a great surprise, where there's a lot of stuff we would have never expected to see get announced, or it could be all the stuff we know about with a few handfuls of announcements that are fine, good, but nothing stellar. Again though, I think the big thing about Nintendo is that they don't rely on E3 exclusively. Anything that isn't announced or made big news at E3 this year is simply because they are saving more stuff for later in the year to talk about, so there's always that chance that if we don't see everything we want at E3, we might just get an announcement a month or two later. (rock music)