Nintendo hosted a 45 minute event Nintendo Direct Live Stream on Wednesday, revealing upcoming games and updates for Nintendo Switch.
As many gamers expected, Nintendo shared a trailer for the highly anticipated The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the follow-up to the franchise’s beloved Breath of the Wild. The game will be released on May 12, 2023 and will be the most expensive standard edition of a game yet, retailing for $69.99.
While the new Zelda game wrapped up the presentation, the broadcast opened with a trailer for Pikmin 4, which is scheduled to release on July 21, 2023. That’s almost two years after Nintendo teamed up with Pokémon Go maker Niantic to release the AR game Pikmin Bloom, which encourages players to walk outside and collect seedlings. Perhaps the most important information here is that in Pikmin 4, you can ride a dog named Oatchi.
Particularly nostalgic fans of old Nintendo franchises had even more to celebrate. Nintendo Switch Online subscribers will soon be able to play select Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance games; the platform already offers certain games from older consoles like the Nintendo 64, NES, SNES, and Sega Genesis. Some games, available today, include Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins, Mario Kart: Super Circuit, Kirby’s Dream Land, and The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap.
Zelda and Pikmin have decades of history, but Nintendo has also found success in more recent franchises like Splatoon, which debuted in 2015; the most recent installment, Splatoon 3, launched on the Nintendo Switch in September. Splatoon 3 was the second best selling game for Nintendo last quarter, with 10.1 million units sold (in first place was Pokémon Scarlet & Violet with 20.6 million).
Fans of these ink-splattered punk rock squids and octolings have new material to look forward to in the months to come. Nintendo announced a paid expansion pack for Splatoon 3, which will span two waves: Inkopolis, which will be released this spring, and Side Order, which will arrive later. Inkopolis looks a bit disappointing; It’s another setting to explore, but as of this trailer, it doesn’t look like the available weapons and gear are any different than what’s already in the game. The second wave, however, seems to plunge us into a colorless, blank canvas of a world (which, presumably, we drench in bright ink). That’s a little more intriguing than a performance by the Squid Sisters (no offense to that cool fictional band).
Other announcements include Metroid Prime Remastered (available now), Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe (available February 24), and news about expansion content for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Fire Emblem Engage, and Xenoblade Chronicles 3.
For those keeping score at home: No, there was no update on Silksong.
