Yesterday, Nintendo had its first major Direct presentation since September 2019, and the general sentiment from fans is that most came away disappointed with what was shown.
While the Switch itself has surged during the pandemic lockdown with huge sales and scarce availability, actual major game releases for it slowed to a crawl in 2020, with the largest being Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but not much a whole lot else past that.
Fans have been hoping that would change in 2021, but even in February here, that does not seem like it’s going to be the case. We have some anticipated games like New Pokémon Snap on the way, and as ever, new Smash Bros. characters, but in terms of actual, big franchise releases? It doesn’t seem like much will make it out this year.
The Direct’s big reveal tease was Splatoon 3, which will be out in 2022.
Nintendo specifically said that they would not be showing any footage from Breath of the Wild 2, and we’d have a look at it “later in the year.” A bit strange for a game that was announced two years ago, but it’s almost certainly not coming out this year, if this is where we’re at. Instead, Switch is getting a version of Skyward Sword, originally released in 2011.
BOTW 2
Nintendo
We have no updates at all on Metroid Prime 4, which Nintendo previously said would take a long time due to some work effectively being started over for the game, when they didn’t like the direction it was going. But there’s no way that will be out this year either.
No word on potential big hits like Mario Kart 9, as the Switch is still riding high on sales of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, when the original was released in 2014.
There’s Mario Golf, Pokémon Snap, Harvest Moon and then a whole lot of Switch ports of existing games, but in terms of the kind of major releases from Nintendo IPs that fans want to see, it sure does not seem like anything truly major will make it out in 2021 at this rate, at least nothing listed above.
Again, this has little bearing on Switch sales, which remain incredibly strong, and there’s already a great roster of games to play on the system. We also don’t know if Nintendo actually plans to release a “Switch Pro” by the end of this year, as has been rumored, as the original’s tech continues to get more and more dated in the face of next-gen. Not that Nintendo is directly competing with PS5 and Series X at this point, but obviously all hardware evolves, and fans have been expecting a new version of the Switch for a while now.
In short, there wasn’t anything to truly get wildly excited about in the Direct unless you are a very diehard fan of some very specific franchises. But Nintendo’s major releases remain in another castle, and that castle will not be found until 2022 at least, it seems.
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