Why All Nintendo Directs are Cancelled (at Least For Now)

Nintendo Directs may well be coming to an end. We've reached the end of the vague period of digital presentations that took E3's place this year. In all this time, Nintendo has been almost entirely absent, having chosen not to give us a big, long, juicy Nintendo Direct digital presentation for the first time in years.

It would be nice to assume that this is purely because of challenges around making a Nintendo Direct while working remotely, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Nintendo's President, Shuntaro Furukawa, has repeatedly told investors that traditional marketing practices, including Nintendo Directs, are not in the company's best interests at the moment.

Instead, Nintendo is increasing its advertising budget in an attempt to appeal to casual non-gamers who might not have played many Nintendo games - or any other games - before. Because this worked out so well during the Wii era and had zero repercussions for the fanbase moving forward...

Now, in fairness, Nintendo has done pretty well so far out of not giving us generic company-wide Nintendo Directs. Targeted presentations, such as Smash Directs or the Paper Mario: The Origami King reveal trailer, are bringing in a larger audience of potential customers who don't want to sit through a lengthy presentation. This does come at a cost, though - those advertising yen have to come from somewhere, so it remains to be seen whether Nintendo sticks to this strategy long-term.

In the meantime, don't be too surprised if there aren't any Nintendo Directs this year. This doesn't mean that games aren't coming, it's simply a sign that Nintendo wants to experiment and try different things, for better or worse.

Anyway, we hope you're staying safe.
Lots of love,
BretonStripes (http://twitter.com/bretonstriped) and Kotor (http://twitter.com/kotorcomics)

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Sources for this video:
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