Once again, 2022 asks us to recalibrate our expectations for the hype machine in the gaming industry. This summer megatons came out; the minits are inside.
Nintendo flatly rejected a rudimentary hype that was Summer Game Fest (otherwise known as non-E3) earlier in June, choosing to wait a few weeks before reviewing the upcoming Xenoblade Chronicles 3, and then another week before starting today’s highly qualified Nintendo Direct Mini partner showcase for us. The show, Nintendo stressed in advance, will also be short for third-party games.
Because our expectations have been so carefully managed, it’s hard to feel overwhelmed or dissatisfied with Mini Direct. We’ve been taught to expect great news every summer and great games every winter, and Nintendo’s PR, along with many other gaming companies, is looking for ways to gently tell us that things don’t work that way anymore, at least for now.
Nintendo and its partners are suffering from the same production problems after the pandemic as the rest of the industry, and Mini Direct’s reports rely disproportionately on the news that old games are coming to Switch. Portal! Nier: Automata! Persona 4 (both 3 and 5), finally! Mega Man, Bomberman, Pac-Man – all men attended video games from ancient times. Not that any of this is a mockery. Getting the much-loved Classic classics on the go never gets old, while maintaining the availability of classic games on new platforms is as key to the health of video game culture as it is to the health of publisher balances in the weak times between new releases. It may be money for an old rope, but the rope was better then anyway.
The lineup also showed how good Nintendo is at identifying and nurturing a lower key, less noisy kind of Switch success story. There is a category of game here that may not be classified as AAA in terms of its production value, budget or advertising factor, but can be expected to be sold quietly and silently on such an accessible platform with such a demographically wide base of players. . Minecraft Legends, Sonic Frontiers and Monster Hunter Rise – the big new extension for which Sunbreak opened the show – are perfect examples of this. Games like these mean that the Switch can thrive without Call of Duty or FIFA (the right FIFA after all).
Another great example of this phenomenon is Nintendo’s stealth game, which has crept into this showcase of partners for technical reasons. Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope was developed and co-published with Ubisoft, but is still a Mario game. Its predecessor came out of the left field with an apparently niche concept, best summarized as “what if XCOM, but Mario?” It was also a great game that sold 8 million copies. It’s the kind of game that looks like a filler, but is actually a solid, supporting pillar of the graphics release. Who’s to say that Harvestella or Disney Dreamlight Valley – both shiny, corporate take on the indie hit Stardew Valley – won’t be the next game to fit into that category? On the Switch, such things are possible.
The range of the Switch 2022 that is emerging here may not seem as exciting – in part because we were specifically instructed not to get excited about it – but it’s more solid than it seems. It’s at least a little more solid than the Xbox. The shaky release schedule doesn’t matter much to Microsoft because it’s in the process of convincing people to subscribe to a Game Pass game catalog instead of buying them when they come out. Nintendo, in contrast, is still very much in retail, but has insured against bad times in a different way: by spreading its stakes.
Whether internally or with partners, Nintendo likes to line up much smaller teams that make games from small to medium scale. The space between indie games and AAA mega-productions may feel cramped on other platforms, but this space is exactly where Nintendo thrives. With lower overhead and less riding on them, these games are just easier to get out the door. The legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 has been postponed to the spring of 2023 and may be postponed even further, but you can bet that Splatoon 3 will be released in September.
Nintendo is doing something else that is hard to see any other publisher doing: ending the games, sometimes completely secretly, and then postponing them until it’s time to release them. Metroid Prime’s Switch remaster was reportedly completed as early as last summer; this week, Giant Bomb’s Jeff Grubb said he was told “quite emphatically” that the remaster existed and would be released in November 2022 to coincide with the game’s 20th anniversary. This has a good resonance for him, but it also helps to fill a calmer year, as well as take advantage of the momentum built by Metroid Dread.
Add Bayonetta 3 and the guaranteed monster hit Pokémon Scarlet and Violet – which is strangely easy to forget, perhaps because Nintendo allows The Pokémon Company to do all its own PR – and the Switch actually has what it is, at least in the game – hungry Wednesday of 2022, heavyweight team. Nintendo’s relatively modest approach to game development, affiliate signing, and advertising itself may not be sexy, but it works. This is the epitome of the Switch’s own hardware philosophy: size is not everything.
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