One of my favourite Directs ever personally; tons of stuff I'll get, Zelda of course, Xenoblade Genesis looked awesome, Onimusha, Switch Sports Resort, Space Marine 2, Dragon's Dogma 2...

Easily the most I have enjoyed a Nintendo show since the June 2024 Direct, great show.

First party reveals were surprisingly sparse. I expected some big sellers, but the current lineup looks disappointing. Maybe they will reveal 2D Metroid in September, although no new Mario title will affect the sales this year.

I feel dissapointed and partly because we did not had a Nintendo Direct for a long time so expectations were higher and it is still in the Phase of 'look 3rd Parties are coming or will port a game finally to Switch 2'. Duskblood/Zelda is great but dissapointed to being still a tease..

That FF 2DHD game looks great tho.

All in all, I was really hoping for more out of this direct, but the fact that they spent the first 5 minutes just on Rhythm Heaven and wasted so much time on showing off the thumb war minigame were signs that this was not going to be the packed direct we were hoping for.

The good: The Kingdom Hearts announcements, The Xenoblade announcements, Switch Sports returning to Wuhu Island (even with the needless thumb war demo), third-party announcements like Devil May Cry 5, and of course Ocarina of Time, which is thankfully going with a more realistic art style instead of cell-shading. New games can continue to use and update the cell-shading art style, but a remake of Ocarina needed to stick closer to the original and 3DS art style.

The bad - still not much in terms of first-party games for Switch 2. We're repeating the 3DS's 2011 with updated versions of Star Fox 64 and Ocarina of Time, and that was considered a weak lineup even with Super Mario 3D World and Mario Kart 7 coming to the rescue at the end of the year. In addition to those 2 games, there's Switch Sports Resort, Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave, and Splatoon Raiders. No DLC announced for Mario Kart 8. No hint at a new Mario or Smash. Nothing from F-Zero or Kirby or Luigi's Mansion or a bunch of other franchises.

Weird third-party omissions. Where was Elden Ring? With Capcom doing so well on Switch 2, why is there still nothing on ports of RE2 and RE4 Remake? What is Platinum doing?

All the other recent announcements of games coming to Switch 2 like Modern Warfare 4, Tomb Raider, and Spyro are still doing a lot of heavy lifting. Switch 2 has a great lineup of upcoming games, but still not a great lineup of first-party Nintendo games. I was really hoping that now that we've gone through the 'originally in development for Switch 1 games' the 'built from the ground up for Switch 2' games would really start to pour in with this direct, but that will have to wait even longer now. It's so weird that the Switch is a year old and no new Mario game has been revealed. That has never happened in Nintendo's entire history.

Completely slipped my mind. But yes I was expecting Elden Ring here. I think some Switch 2 footage of the game even leaked recently. Weird.

Also no P4R here seems like Atlus are shafting Switch 2 with a late port for some reason.

I feel like coming off the Xbox and SGF presentations, Nintendo was really pinned into a position of needing to go all out to impress. That said, of the big four presentations, I’d say this sits as the third best. It was a solid Direct, don’t get me wrong, but… it’s hard to impress coming off a Spyro 4 reveal lol.

I need a sec to organize my thoughts… oof its early in the morning for one of these presentations.

Why didn't wait and revealed the Star Fox game on this direct? It would have made look better

This is the best third party support we've had since the SNES days. Pretty unreal. I just want the new Persona games as well and I'm 100% happy. So happy with Stellar Blade! Some pretty cool stuff announced.

Nintendo is keeping their first party titles even closer to their chest than during the Switch 1 days. Not sure if this is a good thing since it always gives the impression that only a handful of games are in development. But man, Ocarina of Time, Xenoblade 1 through everything, Switch Sports Resort, Star Fox, Rhythm Heaven... lots of games for me here!

Overall, there's been a seismic shift when it comes to third party support: In the past the reactions were "Oh, this is coming to Switch? Surprise!" In the future it will be: "Oh, this is NOT coming to Switch 2?!"

Strong overall, though nothing particularly catches my eye. Switch Sports Resort releasing before Switch Sports 1 got boxing is an absolute embarrassment, though. Why did they bother keeping it for Resort? Shame.

No Nintendo Selects for the Switch. I should have asssumed that, considering the Switch 2 is backwards compatible and they are making a killing with the updates anyway, but still. Switch games are going to be expensive for a long time, I assume.

A solid show, but I wonder if Nintendo will even bother with another full Direct this year or just have dedicated ones now that it's likely we know the big games (Zelda, Splatoon, etc). Plenty to keep me busy for the year (finally get to play Stellar Blade). Xenoblade isn't really my thing, but if it was, I'd be very happy. The Zelda reveal being such a brief tease was the only big disappointment for me (Duskbloods too) but there is a lot of support for the system, especially Capcom and SE. Nice that Switch Sports Resort was actually a new game too. Looks like Nate the Hate called it where it counts.

The biggest takeaway for me though was all of this stuff running at this level on Switch 2. Seeing Kingdom Hears 4 being unveiled felt like I was watching a typical current-gen reveal, not the usual toned-downed hybrid version. It's good enough to make that great first impression now and all of this on the most affordable hardware with all of the biggest exclusives. Looking good for Switch 2 for the foreseeable future. STILL waiting for WWHD, TPHD and Wooly World for Switch 1 though.

If a September Direct does happen, I expect: MHW & REmakes 2-4 announced, a Pikmin 4 upgrade and something with Mario - either MKW DLC and/or 3D Mario revealed (with some gameplay!).