Better pacing is my only complaint. Hit me with the major announcements and leave the little stuff for the end. Overall I think set an industry standard with their directs. No flash, just games with dates and gameplay.

I gave it a 15 out of 10. Of course I enjoyed it.  Including making people watch the Mario trailer.  That doesn't mean I'm re-watching a 40 minute announcement video.

Also I don't even remember the direct or switch reveal. Those were years ago. You can't hate what you don't remember. The opposite of love isn't hate. It's indifference.

You talk about "bloat" but then also talk about "explaining experience".  Someone standing up there explaining how to play a game is absolutely the definition of bloat.

Hardly anyone rates Directs objectively, not even remotely. The verdicts that get thrown around are commonly absurdly subjective and they all depend on which games were shown and which ones were not. It's not even rare that a single game can make or break a Direct.

So what value do suggestions for how Nintendo should do their Directs have? If I am generous, somewhere in the range of 0.5 to 1 point out of 5.

But ultimately, it's always as simple as "don't like it, don't buy it." Endless complaints won't solve a thing, because Nintendo does what Nintendo wants to do regardless of any suggestions and recommendations from outside their company. Hence why people who whine about Saudi Arabia buying some Nintendo stock should just shut up. Yeah, I am getting sidetracked. Time to stop writing and hit the Submit button.

The verdict came. Like a game you saw on the Direct ? Buy it.

Felt mild about some ? Wait and see approach.

Didn't like what was shown ? Don't buy it.

Agree the rewatch factor is weird for just an announcement video. TBH the amount of new TV/movies coming out, there isn't really much time to rewatch something unless it's truly amazing start to finish. Only way you can rewatch shit is if you don't work and have too much spare time or we have such a bad year in movie tv making that nothing new is worth watching.

Directs are as good as the interest level in the games being announced/outlined. Other than changing the core purpose of Directs, I don't see much that can be done to make them more interesting. And, frankly, if they try to make them more interesting they're more likely to succeed at turning people off than on.

I think you're expecting them to be more than what they are. They are a vehicle for making game announcements. Just like older ways of doing so (E3) the announcements are going to vary depending on the type of product. Sometimes a teaser may be enough, other times they may want to focus on a particular mechanic, and so on.

So I don't think the scale here makes particular sense, and I don't really see a need for an overhaul.

I can agree with that. My major problem was that the Direct felt unnecessarily lengthy for a bunch of announcements they weren’t going to really elaborate on. I felt they could have done it in 1/5th to 1/8th the time easily. For me, at least, that would have felt much more impactful. Perhaps spend a little more time on Mario RPG.

You’re never going to try to see my point of view, so we’re going to have to agree to disagree. You think excitement and important information about a game is bloat. I think 40 minutes of bad trailers to achieve what could easily be done in a 4 minute montage is bloat.

Sorry about your memory issues.

I know I’m an odd one when it comes to rating Directs.

To answer the question, I’m fine with Directs being about a 2-3 on my rating list, but like to see at least one 4-5 per year. But if it’s going to be a “this is only to announce the coming games” - four minutes instead of forty would suffice for that Direct. Perhaps spotlight a few games with higher quality trailers that show why we should be excited about them - but those trailers were (IMO) mostly garbage that made the games look worse than showing nothing at all would have. If an announcement is sufficient, then I think all it needs is 5, maybe 10 seconds tops. The Mario RPG one being the exception of a trailer I found interesting, because they made it entertaining instead of straight bland context-free clips. That’s just my opinion.

To put it another way, “I don’t like it, won’t buy it” isn’t always about the game, but because the random 90 seconds of clips with no context might make an interesting game look like crap. So that’s where I find some of the more recent Directs have been failing. Nintendo can and has done a lot better in the past. I doubt Breath of the Wild or Animal Crossing New Horizons would have done nearly as they did had Nintendo not shown the world why they should want these games. Animal Crossing: New Horizons was a masterclass in great marketing.

I’m guilty of winding off topic as well. So yeah, on Saudi Arabia - I have my scruples with the fact that their regime is getting money out of my pocket. But there’s the argument that perhaps Saudi Arabia might be more likely to change regimes if they’re more invested in the culture of the liberalized world. In other words, it rubbed me the wrong way, but ultimately I’m not concerned with it.