I wrote a long ass comment, but it got swallowed up in a black hole when the site was down. Basically, I could see the direct being in October, rather than September. While it is true that we've had a September direct for the past two years, I think it was much more vital for those years than it is for this one. There's so many titles releasing this year ... meaning there's less of a need for new game announcements, but at the same time even the games coming out in September have already had pretty extensive coverage, once again making it feel less important. Link's Awakening is a remake that seems to have it's one major "new" gimmick already revealed, Daemon X Machina has had extensive coverage, and Dragon Quest 11 had it's best trailer as it's first one ... before they decided to basically just recut that trailer but make it worse twice in a row! I think the middle of October would be a good time for a Direct. All these games could simply have a launch trailer, but then again, I guess it doesn't really matter if the Direct is in September or October! Lol.
As for Pikmin 3 in November, I really doubt it. Mario and Sonic is releasing in November, Pokemon is releasing in November, Luigi's Mansion is releasing on October 31st ... basically making it a November game.
Anyways, onto what I want (not necessarily just predictions) ...
What I want most of all is for them to announce some sort of plan to fix 3D World in Mario Maker 2. I never would imagine wanting an update for a game as much as a new game announcement, but here we are. Mario Maker 2 is possibly the greatest Switch game yet released ... but man ... the 3D World style is just awful! It feels so undercooked, like they added it in on the last minute, despite being one of the games biggest selling points. There's no tracks, no stackable enemies, no on/off blocks (just switches!), no saws, no spikes, etc. New Super Mario Bros U. is seriously one of the top two best styles in the entire game ... just because how versatile it is. I want 3D World to really be expanded in this regard.
As far as new releases for next year, I think we'll probably get a Super Paper Mario RPG next year. Maybe not announced at the next direct, since this year is already packed and that might distract, but I could very well see it announced then as well. It was found out recently that only around 16 of the Intelligent Systems staff were working on Three Houses, meaning most of the horsepower behind it's development was Koei Tecmo. I think this means that Intelligent Systems is probably working on 2-3 games we don't know about yet, with the other two probably being released in the next year (Paper Mario + WarioWare).
We'll probably get an announcement for SNES Online considering the new FCC filing for SNES controller for Switch.
Maybe an update on Town? Think it would probably get delayed to next year though.
That's all I can think of. Also, no Bayonetta 3. Even if it's after Astral Chain launches, they'll probably save that reveal for the Game Awards.
