Given how amazing Nintendo has done since the launch of the Switch, and how well they’ve been spacing out indie releases, third-party titles, and first-party tentpole series, anticipation was high that they would blow us all away with this year’s Nintendo Direct for E3. However, if you’ve had your pulse on fandom, the word “underwhelming” is one that was being thrown around quite a bit.

Sure, Nintendo devoted a decent amount of time for the upcoming Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and the inclusion of Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Hollow Knight were all very promising, but there wasn’t much beyond that. Nowhere to be seen was Metroid Prime 4 (which was teased last year with a logo), and very little was shown about Pokémon: Let’s Go Pikachu! and Eevee! (though there was more in the Nintendo Treehouse YouTube channel on the latter), much less the core RPG Pokémon entry fans have been waiting for. Why not?

Speaking with IGN, Nintendo’s Bill Trinen cleared the air, saying:

“There was other stuff that we probably could have included in E3, but is probably a bit further out, and so we decided to really kind of keep the focus a little bit more on between now and early 2019, which I think you saw some hints of there with a couple of games.”

“We want to show stuff when we think it’s ready to show. Obviously it’s not like we’ve stopped working on any of the things we talked about last year, that stuff’s all being worked on. We’ll just show stuff when we’re ready to show it and really, right now, the focus is on two big games in the form of Smash and Pokémon [Let’s Go Eevee and Let’s Go Pikachu].”

Okay, that’s fair enough. In the past, I’ve complained that some devs spend too much time on games not set to hit for years, and as cool as that is, it doesn’t do much for building anticipation for the year. With this approach, they have eyes set in the immediate future, hopefully pleasing enough fans so that they’ll keep faith with the console, with the full knowledge that those big-ticket properties are still on the way.

What do you think of Trinen’s comments? Was it the right approach for Nintendo? Leave your thoughts in the usual spot down below!

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SOURCE: IGN