It’s hard to imagine a world in which Nintendo doesn’t consistently update its fans with charming videos about its upcoming games. The Nintendo Direct format changed the industry and the way games are marketed to hardcore fans when it debuted in 2011. Every genre you can think of probably has a Direct-style showcase. All the major publishers, like Microsoft and Sony, have their own version of the Nintendo Direct. Can you imagine if Nintendo ever stopped making its signature videos?
This thought experiment isn’t entirely theoretical, according to former Nintendo employees Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang. The duo recently recorded a podcast wherein they responded to a viewer’s observation that Nintendo did not announce Splatoon Raiders via a Direct showcase, like it normally does for other first-party games.
The podcast hosts point out that Nintendo Direct was a response to a specific need 15 years ago. At the time, the podcasters claim, Nintendo wanted to operate on a more global scale. Rather than letting things like fans or blogs translate announcements from other regions, the Japanese company wanted to have more control over the flow of information. Former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata was also reportedly a big fan of how Apple treated its own announcements like an event, Yang says.
This was also a period when E3 was still around, so any major announcements made by Nintendo during the event would inherently be in competition with other news items.
“Mr. Iwata did not like that,” Yang says, recounting that the event sometimes made developers feel like they had to show a game before they were actually ready. “I remember very clearly, he was a downer on that … a bit of Nintendo arrogance, like, ‘Why do we have to do things on their time?'”
Curiously, Ellis claims that Nintendo aimed its Direct presentations at only the most dedicated portions of its fan base, to the degree that higher-ups would apparently veto attempts to make the videos more mainstream. Partly to ensure that the company did not lose sight of its fans, but there was also a logistical component to it as well. Nintendo Direct, which required cooperation from dozens of parties and some of Nintendo’s top talent, was already a lot of work. Kit and Krysta claim that Nintendo was not keen on complicating things even further.
Despite Nintendo’s best efforts, the Direct videos broke containment. Nintendo Direct became big enough that even average video game fans and personalities started watching and judging them.
A year before Kit and Krysta left Nintendo, they say they attended a Nintendo meeting where someone spoke to those concerns. The topic wasn’t a one-off, either.
“They’re like, you know, we might reach a point faster than we think that Nintendo Direct is not the solution,” Kit recalls. “So we need to proactively start thinking about other ways to accomplish what Nintendo Direct let us do.”
It’s important to note that both podcasters have not worked at Nintendo for years, and as far as anyone can tell, Nintendo hasn’t given up the Direct format altogether. But everything the duo say lines up with the way Nintendo has been operating of late. Recent Nintendo Directs have focused more on a single game, like Kirby Air Riders, Donkey Kong Bananza, and Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, rather than on sweeping showcases. Some major announcements, like the release date for The Legend of Zelda movie, were doled out on the Nintendo Today app. Nintendo’s approach could encourage more people to download it. But realistically, it’s only the most hardcore of fans who will be using Nintendo Today on a regular basis.
For now, Nintendo Direct doesn’t seem like it’s on the chopping block. But if you believe Kit and Krysta, Nintendo abandoning its iconic announcement format isn’t as outlandish as it sounds.
“You would think that they would be more precious about stuff like this … but they don’t care,” Yang says. “They will just cut the cord on stuff.”
You can watch the full podcast, which goes into more detail about how Nintendo Direct videos are put together, here.
Enjoy the creator of Mario getting absolutely grilled in a historic Nintendo lawsuit
Shigeru Miyamoto gave his testimony in the 1983 case against Universal, the proprietors of King Kong
About the Author
