Games Inbox: What games will be in today’s Nintendo Direct?

The Thursday letters page is convinced a new Donkey Kong game is coming to Nintendo Switch 2, as one reader worries when the new The Witcher trilogy will be completed.

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Farewell gift
Well, I wouldn’t have betted on that. All the rumours were true and there really is going to be a Switch 1 Direct this week. The dangers of casual gamers mistaking it for next week’s Direct seem obvious, but I guess Nintendo, in their wisdom, don’t think it’s an issue.

Who knows what they’re going to talk about, but I really, really hope it’s going to be that fan service game because I love the idea of Nintendo saying goodbye to the Switch with a game they know probably won’t sell well but is a chance to bring back a forgotten franchise.

That’s the dream anyway. More likely though it’ll just be some remasters and a bunch of third party and indie games, but they must have something in mind to bother doing this, so I’m guessing it can only be Metroid Prime 4. But I’m not sure.

I love that I don’t know though. People were saying it’s neat that we don’t know what to expect next week but now we’ve got a Switch 1 event and we’ve no idea what’s going on there either, even before we get to the new console!
Banfree

Strange timing
I am shocked that the rumours about a Switch 1 Direct this week turned out to be true. I have no idea what it’s about or why Nintendo has done it. But it’s such a weird thing to do, given next week, that I can only assume that it must be for a very specific reason.

They say they won’t be talking about the Switch 2, but this must have something to do with it, whether it’s Metroid Prime 4 being cross-gen or backwards compatibly or something else. Maybe they won’t make the connection obvious this week, but it’s got to be related.

You don’t have two Directs less than a week apart and there not be connection between them. Because if there isn’t, why do it now? There are no Switch 1 games coming out soon, so they could’ve done this week’s Direct at any time, if there wasn’t a special reason for it being now.
Onibee

Long story
I’m not sure anyone expected The Witcher 4 to be released next year but 2027 is earlier than I thought so I’ll take it, even if I doubt it will be out by then. Let’s say there is a new trilogy though, when is it going to be completed? Assume each game takes a minimum of five years to make, it won’t be done until 2037. I’ll be retired by then!

I don’t think some gamers have quite caught on to how long games take to make now. We probably won’t get the Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy finished until around 2028 and it started in 2015! And that’s for a remake, where a lot of the groundwork is already done for you.

I’m not saying this is anyone’s fault in particular but I think we should probably lay off trilogies until things catch up and maybe AI can help. I don’t want to literally die of old age before a story is finished.
The Bishop

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Work and play
Just found out that the CEO and co-owner of the makers of Atomfall (as well as the Sniper Elite series and owners of 2000AD) is the same bloke that I’ve been binge watching on YouTube recently: Jason Kingsley.

He runs a channel called Modern History TV that delves into the medieval era, it’s really interesting (if you like your history) and he obviously has a passion for the subject. He also does medieval reenactment shows, jousting and the like.

OK, not strictly gaming related but I found it interesting and shows not all CEOs sit behind a desk all day counting their money and twiddling their moustache in a malevolent way.
TheTruthSoul (PSN ID)

GC: We’ve met him a couple of times and asked why he doesn’t use his passion for the era to make a game, but he didn’t really have an answer. Maybe he subconsciously wants to maintain a divide between work and his hobbies.

Donkey magic
Surely there has to be something Donkey Kong related during at least one of the two(!) upcoming Nintendo Directs.

Nintendo have been very proactive in keeping him in the public consciousness, with rereleases and remakes, recently-unveiled Nike trainers (if you’ve yet to see them, they’re hideous), and probably a bunch more stuff I’ve forgotten or don’t know about.

Considering how prominent and popular he was in the movie, and the amount of real estate he has in Nintendo’s theme parks, I’m willing to bet we’ll see a brand spanking new Donkey Kong in the next two weeks.
ANON

GC: If it was anyone other than Nintendo we’d say it’s almost certain. Even knowing it’s them, we’d say it’s very likely.

No competition
I’m looking forward to GTA 6 as much as the next person but I can’t help thinking that a game having that much influence on the industry, to the point where every other game, and probably even the Switch 2, is rushing to get out of its way.

Hard to pin the blame on anyone in particular but if there’s one thing gaming needs less of it’s giant entities blocking out the sun for everyone else and making not just competition impossible but even basic existence.

I certainly can’t blame Rockstar for being popular, but I do think it shows how foolish other companies have been in not trying to create any kind of competitor. GTA clones haven’t been a thing for at least 10 or 15 years now, and yet I can think of plenty of them that were pretty popular, like Sleeping Dogs, Saints Row (pre-reboot), and The Simpsons: Hit & Run.

They might not be the biggest games ever, but they all seemed to sell well and review well so why did they stop? As usual, it seems like the all or nothing approach has blinded publishers. Their clones weren’t as big as GTA, so they just gave up and now that’s left the field open to Rockstar to make it almost impossible for anyone to rival them, whether they want to try or not.

Competition is good and there’s so little of it in the games industry now that it’s really beginning to worry me.
Benson

The sweet blood, oh, it sings to me
I was thinking a great place for Assassin’s Creed to go would be 17th Century Edinburgh, during the bubonic plague outbreak.

The plague wiped out parts of the city which have been built over now but can still be visited underground.

If not Assassin’s Creed, then I’d love to see a game based around that in some way.
Shug

GC: Edinburgh’s architecture was one of the major influences for Bloodborne and the story in the game does deal with a mass affliction. Or there’s the flawed but extremely ambitious Pathologic 2, if you want to explore just the plague side of things.

More to come
Odd to think Nintendo would do a Switch Direct this week, when the Switch 2 reveal next week would immediately overshadow everything but maybe it’ll be announced after I hit send on this. With regards to Switch 2 it’s strange to be in this position with a Nintendo machine, where we not only know quite a lot about it, but also everything we don’t know is fairly easy to have an educated guess at.

I read a recent round up (on IGN I think) of the latest predictions and it was still what everyone has been talking about over the last six to 12 months. PlayStation 4/Steam Deck power, DLSS, Mario Kart 9, mouse functions, £400-450 price, 8 inch LCD, June launch, etc., etc. Even third party launch titles like Resident Evil 4 remake, Final Fantasy 7, and Assassin’s Creed Mirage are entirely predictable.

Nintendo need to bring the first party goods next week to make an impact, third party support isn’t why people buy their machines. So while having those at launch is nice and all… I can get them for under 20 quid on PlayStation. Nintendo need something that you can only do on the Switch 2 to sell a £400 upgrade to the masses. And this time it’s even tougher since tens of millions of people weren’t sitting on their Wii U’s quite happy playing Splatoon and Mario Kart 8 in 2017.

We may have all talked ourselves into a consensus, but there has to be something we haven’t seen yet… whether that’s through software like the new Mario Kart or 3D Mario using ray-tracing, online functionality or just generally the extra oomph in exciting new ways. Insomniac using SSD loading for the portals in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, for example. Imagine what Mario could do with that creative potential.

Or a gimmick we haven’t seen in the hardware itself to differentiate it. I’m not sure a niche use case like mouse functionality for a Super Mario Maker 3 would qualify, it needs to span all general uses of the system. What happened with that online system test from earlier in the year? Perhaps some kind of Miiverse return will be baked into the console OS from the start.

Guess we’ll find out soon enough.
Marc

GC: We’ve seen 17 seconds of one game and the reveal of the console explained nothing. We think it’s safe to say there’s more we don’t know.

Inbox also-rans
Am I missing something but why is Silent Hill f set in Japan, if Silent Hill is a town in Maine? Is that what Kojima’s Silent Hills name meant all along, and we didn’t realise?
Coolsbane

GC: Silent Hill: The Short Message was set in Germany. Changing the setting seems to be a new thing for these games.

If Indiana Jones And The Great Circle is a hit on PS5 do you think we’ll see a sequel? Do we know what MachineGames is working on next?
Josh

GC: They’ve been hinting at a Quake reboot for a few years now.

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