Well no, I’m really enjoying this year. I picked up and played a number of RPGs and Adventure titles on sale this year, plus got Live A Live and Xenoblade Chronicles 3, as well as a few interesting more experimental titles.
On Breath of the Wild 2. It’s coming out in April-June 2023, it seems kind of pointless/counter-productive to advertise so far before its release. That’d be Wii U era level marketing incompetence—don’t get me wrong, I loved Iwata and felt he was great at driving a hardware concept like the Wii—and was fantastic at giving us an inner-look into the development histories of games, and the people involved (Iwata Asks are a priceless resource even to this day). But in the Wii U era (and later Wii/early 3DS era), his marketing department began to focus on most heavily promoting games that weren’t going to be available for a long time—it seemed like excitement levels were heaviest about games like 1-2 years before release, rather than in the lead up to a release. Future games kept eclipsing the current release window. There was always this feeling like the present schedule didn’t matter, and the exciting games were coming out way in the future. One thing I’ve liked about Switch is that it feels a lot like SNES and PSX, that what’s releasing now is important, what’s already released is relevant.
Also, why so much focus on waiting for Nintendo Directs for news and updates when there’s a constant stream of that the Switch News Channel? There are features every day, and each week they do a review of sales and new releases. A steady stream of news, details, and features on games that are actually relevant. Also, Directs are somewhat shallow on information most of the time—the News Channel is much more informative, giving better breakdowns about what games are actually about as well as having all sorts of media. And, unlike Directs, the News channel has remained consistent with content and quality across years. The best part about it is it’s generally about the stuff you can either already play, or will be able to play in the next month. While there is the occasional story about distant future stuff, they focus more on being informative and adding to the intrigue rather than the Wii U era strategy of hyping distant future stuff and dulling the blade of their present content.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
