Here are the latest news from the last month disclosed during the January ND:

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(Hyrule Warriors at december, just to don't left empty)

Now, the ones last year:

Mario Kart and 3D Mario for E3.

Two Zeldas in development, one is original and the other the HD coversion of The Wind Waker. First image. More info at E3. The original one for the console will rethink some conventions.

Yarn Yoshi announced. First images and footage.

X from Monolith soft announced. First trailer.

SMTxFE announced. New crossover. No info.

So, what do you think? It's clear to me. DK for february, MK for may, Hyrule Warrios for august and Smash with NFC figurines at holiday. If we are lucky X and Bayo 2 in between.

Maybe some updates on some announced games like Yarn Yoshi and SMTxFE at E3. Remember that some games, like TWW were greenlited at the last moment. so same can happen this time with other remakes like TPHD or SunshineHD to fill the gap.

Thoughts?

I guess Nintendo finally realized that these directs do not work.
Sales are still low, Most of the directs lately have been blah and with the company's last big bit of info bombing, maybe its really a good thing to end them.

No lol. ND is the best way to communicate with their fanbase. 

I don't think there's much more they can announce for this year. Maybe they have one more big Christmas game for E3, but really Mario Kart + Smash Bros = big year for Nintendo.

It's like people expect them to have the yearly output of the entire rest of the games publishers combined.

Would kinda suck if that's the case, since it probably means Nintendo won't share much of anything with us until E3. At least the NDs forced them out of their shell. 

If there isn't one in the next week or so, then yeah I think NDs might be getting the axe. Perhaps Iwata figures its also better for him to stay behind the scenes during this rocky period.

really?  the best way?  I bet if I went up to and asked 20 wii u or 3ds owners what a nintendo direct is, maybe one of them would know and the rest wouldn't.  Nintendo would probably have better luck using more traditional game media, but nintendo has never liked releasing any kind of control of their message.  Which is part of the problem with nintendo.  They are way too controlling with information.  

Nintendo directs cost Nintendo virtually nothing and get virtually all of the game press talking. I'd say thats pretty good bang for their buck. Even if someone doesn't watch the direct, if they frequent any game sites, they will know what is going on. Nintendo directs do their job quite well.

@Topic: No, its not a bad sign. We just had a decently big ND not too long ago, and those don't come every month...usually they are just updates with trailers. We will likely have one before DK releases...

^^^^

Not getting the hate for the Directs

I bet PS and Xbox fans would like it if their higher ups had that personal connection with their fans, the way Iwata and Reggie have with Nintendo fans throught Directs. 

Last year's January Direct was an emergency necessitated by poor Wii U sales and delays leaving the release schedule for the first two quarters of 2013 pretty barren. In terms of quantity, the first half of this year might be even worse, but Donkey Kong and Mario Kart represent a stronger overall lineup for the period.

Put simply, last year the January Direct was amazing and E3 was disappointing. This year there is no January Direct and E3 will be awesome.

I think they are too busy trying to figure out how to sell more wiiUs rather then thinking about Nintendo Direct like trying to find an actual release date for games instead of just saying "2014, Please Understand"... If anything, there will probably be one before DK comes out with a lot of release dates for other games