Open world games can become really big timesinks.

Before I played Death Stranding I thought it would finish it in around 30 to 40 hours, when I finished it I had 158 hours, lol. Have 40 hours on Death Strading 2 and like TotK was to BotW, looks like 2 will take even longer than 1.

You definitely can finish those games a lot faster but aside from RPGs older games are definitely shorter.

I just happened to finally beat BotW a couple of weeks ago, after restarting it in March of last year. I put in more than 50 hours before making it to the second divine beast, lol.

If you finish that game in 50 hours or less, you're purposefully skipping out on so much in-game content. You'd have to fast travel every time you want to visit a previous area, ignore dozens of sidequests, never go out of your way to look for shrines, and only engage enemies when the game forces you too. And not touch the DLC.

I'm in the same boat, and that's one reason I'm thinking lately that the Switch 2 will be my last console. I also don't want Nintendo to beat the BotW formula to death with game after game in the same style like it did for five straight 3D Zelda games. By the time I finished Skyward Sword, I had enough of the OoT formula.

Nothing wrong with going back to the more focused, tighter experience of those games at this point though.

I wanna know if they have any Donkey Kong 45th anniversary plans. Donkey Kong Bananza was a big celebration of Donkey Kong in general, so if Nintendo has plans for DK's 45th anniversary it better be even bigger than Bananza.

Think it will be all about Zelda's 40th anniversary starting in the second half of the year and maybe a little bit of Wii Sports/Wii's 20th anniversary (Switch Sports 2?). 

Ocarina of Time reveal + Legend of Zelda Live action movie trailer in summer or fall 2026 will probably start a cycle of things extending through the Zelda movie's release next May. They don't want to start that right now though I think because of the Mario Galaxy movie. That's first on the pecking order, once that has completed its theatrical run (or the primary part of it), they will shift to Zelda. 

DK got some big love from Nintendo though getting his own Universal theme park area + big role in the Mario movie + new 3D platfomer game too, that's not too shabby. 

There is a difference between your life... And the probability of a rumor being accurate.

When we start providing all rumors reverence and support based on a "possibility" then we are throwing facts, evidence and truth out the window in favor of a "maybe".

Now seat-belts *will* improve your chances of survival. That's fact. Based on evidence. (And real world anecdotal experience, having responded to hundreds of accidents over the past few decades.)

There is no evidence that these rumors hold any legitimacy, nor can we garner any such evidence until a later time... When we have moved on from these rumors and people start clinging to the next feel-good rumor out of convenience and click-bait cool-factor.

You are missing the point.

If you believe something without evidence, then you open yourself up to being wrong.

Nate has propagated rumors in the past... And was wrong.
Nate has propagated rumors in the past... And was right.

The extent of his accuracy isn't the issue, it's that we don't know if the current rumors are fact or fiction.
And even if these rumors are true? We don't know if the next lot of rumors will also be fact or faction.

He has a track record of being incorrect... Thus it throws all his claims into question going forth.

Actually... My predictions on what the Switch 2's hardware ended up being... Was bang on.
And I made those predictions at the start of the Switch 1 console cycle.

I predicted it would use Tegra Orin. - And I was lambasted for that prediction as it was not a "mobile chip".
I also predicted the Xbox Series/Playstation 5 would have 16GB of Ram due to costs, despite people screeching for 128GB of Ram based on historical memory increases gen-on-gen.

I made those predictions based on an educational guesses... I speculated. And I was 100% right many many many years later.
I think you were one of those individuals who argued against that Switch 2 prediction at the time if memory serves.

But... I could have also been wrong. Flip of a coin.

I think people are under the false illusion that Nintendo isn't predictable as a company, they most certainly are predictable... Companies will always try to minimize risk in order to maximize their return on investment... And that means we can predict things. - And when a company starts to struggle four things happen:
1) They innovate and take back marketshare. (Wii and Switch after all their other consoles floundered)
2) They back out of the industry. (Sega)
3) They diversify to gain revenue from other segments. (Xbox)
4) They shut down/bankrupt/sell out.

Nintendo took option 1.

I played Breath of the Wild on WiiU, but I did it in half that time... Zelda can be one of those games that you rush through in record time... Or take your time to explore and see everything which blows out gameplay time.

Tears of the Kingdom just couldn't grab me sadly, so I never got far into it.

If a rumor doesn't pan out there's no real consequences or downside, so what does it matter if people want to believe it or discuss it? There's no harm done.

I simply don't find it plausible that Nate could have called so much correctly without a source, so I'm prepared to put enough stock in this to discuss it for fun, it's really that simple.

The harm is that facts will often be swamped by rumors, opinions or speculation.
It also hypes up peoples expectations... And when those expectations aren't met? People are let down.
We need Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft to be the best they can be for competitive reasons that benefit us, the consumer.

We live in an era where misinformation rules supreme and the onus is on us to put an end to it.

If people want to get hyped up that's their choice, they can decide for themselves whether they want to risk being let down.

We can't rule this out as misinformation at this point because it could be true.

This kind of reasoning is literally why there are people who believe that it takes 7 years for gum to digest or that cold weather itself makes you sick.
It's also why there are people who believe the Earth is flat.

Because they are "allowed to decide for themselves" without being challenged or questioned... They are essentially allowed to exist in an echo-chamber, reverberating the same garbage to reinforce their already established confirmation biases with other like-minded individuals.

If we cannot rule it out as misinformation, then the claim should be dumped in the bin... Until such a time there is evidence to support it. And not the reverse.
It's called the "Burden of proof" which is more important than ever.

And no. I won't stop challenging these "leakers" who are just speculators/propagators of rumor... Because people are stupid, because people actually 100% believe it, rather than think of it as a mere "possibility" that should be taken with a grain of salt... And if this thread is any example of that, there are people who are taking these rumors as real, rather than with skepticism... And that is truly disheartening in the information age.