 Welcome to the Nintendo Prime Podcast, episode number four of our rebooted podcast, uh, two miles, kind of in front of me now, not even on the left, but hey, it's your guys on the right. We have the co-host, as always, Mr. Eric Moore. Hello. Rocking the sexy Zeldas shirt to S.E. Oh, yeah. Well, because I wore blue and then I blended into the background, so, yeah. I mean, that's your own problem. No, I know. You get that blue is my favorite color. No, I know. I know. And then obviously we have up on the TV for you guys, Mr. Captain Burgesson. Hello, that's me. You guys, if you even know who he is, if you even know who he is, I'd be surprised. But if you do, it's from probably the Hylian Gamescast over at Game Over Jesse's channel. We just had Game Over Jesse on a couple of weeks ago. He actually showed up. So how about that? There you go. We're making progress with that guy. All right, so I guess let's just get this thing started. Just like three things to talk to you guys, there's no major news that's been happening per se unless all you care about is Switch Pro, and we just did a whole episode on that last week. So let's talk about Mario's 35th anniversary, because it comes to an end this month. All right? Pretty much everything that was going to happen for it has already happened. All the SWAT Fest, the Animal Crossing contents out now. We have even the Super Nintendo World is not open, which wasn't part of the celebration, but it's all Mario themed. So it might as well be part of the celebration. They have that open out in Japan now. But I think the biggest reason to, well, there's really two reasons to talk about the 35th anniversary. One, did Nintendo do a good job and do enough? Two, Nintendo's doing something that only Nintendo does. And that is, at the end of this month, two Mario games, well, four altogether, are just vanishing like they don't exist anymore. If you guys don't know what I'm talking about, nice reminder that Mario 35, which you only play if you're part of the Nintendo Switch Online service, and then Super Mario 3D All-Stars is gone physically and digitally. So it's not just going out of print, won't even be on the eShop. It just doesn't exist anymore. So what are your guys' thoughts on Nintendo? First of all, let's start there with eliminating games. What are your guys' thoughts on this and why Nintendo is doing it? And are we ever going to see these games again? And was this even a good idea for them? Because it almost feels like a sour way to end the 35th anniversary of Mario. Anyone? Go ahead. Well, like the obvious answer I want to say is that the generate demand thing, right? The whole it's a limited time, so you have to buy it. It's an hour never thing and it entices people that way. But then Mario 35 is not really it's pretty pretty much a free game. So I almost feel like that line of reasoning doesn't work for that game, unless it's that they don't want to keep servers up or running or devote those resources to it for too long. I mean, Tentris 99 is free and has been for a while. That's true. But they also sell a physical version now. So you can buy it. You don't have to have the online service. So like Mario 35 is a lot of fun. I understand that like who cares it was free, but it's also. Yeah, but now we just don't have it at all. Like at least 99 to take that away. You can still buy and play it if you want. So yeah, true. Like for people who care about game preservation, it's kind of a whoopsies. We're just not going to be here anymore. Have a good day. Yeah. So OK, so like Mario 35 is is it's really neat. And I think there's some hopes out there for like a DK 40 or a Zelda 35 or something like that this year. Who knows? Maybe that's why it's going away, because they're going to replace it with another similar game from another franchise, potentially. So I could maybe see a justification for that with 3D all stars. Game is sold probably at this point, 10 million copies. And I get that part of the reason it's sold so well is that fear of missing out. The FOMO and Nintendo created by saying, hey, you can only get this game for a very small, limited amount of time. But at the same point, dude, it's a game that sold 10 million copies. Why are they discontinuing it? It's like leaving money out there that they could just keep trickling. Like literally right now, if they just said, hey, look, we're done, like we're not going to, you know, get rid of it. Nobody's going to be mad about that. Yeah. No, no, they'd be. They're just leaving money out. Like, oh, Nintendo listens to our feedback. That's great. It would be a good yard move. Right. Yeah, for sure. The only the only thing I could think of is if Nintendo is that greedy, which they might be, and they're just going to get rid of 3D All-Star so they could sell these games individually later and sell them for a higher price, like 30 bucks a pop, 40 bucks a pop. Yeah. Well, I have I have a theory that these games are going away, but they're going to go away kind of like the NES classic did for a little bit. Right. They're going to go away, come back. They said that was a limited run. It came back. I have a feeling that, like, in part touching off what you said, that they're going to sell these games individually. They're going to take it away now, wait till Zelda's anniversary is done, let that have its run and then bring back the Mario games possibly individually, maybe bring back All-Stars. But I have a feeling that may be what they're doing. Yeah, I think it's a stupid move. I can't think of any, like, positive. Like, yeah, I get that they're going to sell it more for more individually later. People are just going to look for used copies of 3D All-Stars instead of buying those games. And because it sold 10 million, there'll be plenty of used copies out there to buy. So I just don't I don't see a benefit for that. Even if let's presume that like Mario 35, they're replacing it with a Zelda 35th collection, right? Because right now we only know for Zelda. We only know Skyward Sword HD. We don't know about any other games, including Breath of the Wild. We don't even know. We know we're going to get news about Breath of the Wild, but we don't know if it's actually going to be released in the window of the 35th anniversary. So I think it will be. But we'll talk about more about more on that later. But I think that we need to even if they were going to replace it, I don't think that a 3D Zelda All-Stars deters sales from a Mario 3D out there, different kinds of games. Yeah, there's some audience overlap to Nintendo fans. But I mean, that's like saying, hey, look, Breath of the Wild 2 is coming out. We better stop selling Mario Odyssey. It might impact sales. I think I think part of it has to do with generating as much sales right away as you possibly can. Yeah, I understood that to a point. But I understood that before Animal Crossing blew up. Because I could see Nintendo saying, oh, we're in a pandemic. We're not going to have as many games coming out. We need to push sales. So let's make this a limited time thing. And instead, they had the best sales year ever. They had a game sell more copies for a exclusive game than in the history of exclusive games that aren't pack in. So they didn't by the time they announced Mario 3D also, they didn't need it to be that game anymore. And they that's before we knew that things like Age of Calamity was going to come out. Bowser's Fury and 3D Mario and Bowser's 3D blew up as well. That's selling incredibly well. So it's one of those. I can see them doing it like a year ago where they're thinking, OK, maybe we got to worry a little bit. But then by the time it came to an outset, it's kind of like, OK, we don't need to do that. We don't need a boost in sales. Like and Nintendo is not a company to me that ever feels like they're worrying about we need to do something right now. Like, yes, Shintura for a coba factually said they view it as do or die every year. But by the time they had the 35th Mario announcements, they weren't dying. They were doing quite well. Yeah. So the only thing I could think of. No, only one justification I could see for what they're doing. Guys remember the NES and SNES classics? Yeah. Of course, obviously. So like the NES class in particular, they stopped making it. Right. There was a limited time thing. People got pissed. OK, the SNES classic comes up. People are like, what the hell are we going to do? But we still want the NES. Why are you bringing up the SNES? They brought the NES classic back and saw a massive boost in sales. So the one thing I could think of is their thing. And look, we always do this evergreen thing. Right. We sell a million, you know, say we sell a million next quarter, a million the quarter after. What if we just stop and create an artificial demand and then a year from now, bring it back for a month and in that month sell four or five million instead of selling trickle sales all along? Because we're like, hey, we're bringing it back for a limited time. I think you can only do that for so long until people catch on to what you're doing. And then that just basically stops being productive. They haven't done it with a game yet. So I'm saying that they did it with a piece of hardware, right? You're right. But they always said was limited and then demand was so high that, like, well, we're stupid. We've got to make more. Right. And granted, we're not saying demand for 3D All Stars is super high at the moment. I mean, it's high right now because people are worried they can't get it. But it's also not nearly as high as it was at launch. So clearly it's the demand is degraded a little because it's bet. I mean, go to the eShop buy right now. It's not that hard to get stores have a lot of people. I think there's this impression that we're going to get to April 1st and you just can't find the game anymore. Well, you can't find it on the eShop. I'm sure there will be stop stocks everywhere. There's some printing copies of it all the way up through the 31st. Right. There's going to be new shipments factually of the game landing in early April. Yeah, you just will be able to find a digital game going in the summer. And then in the summer, by the time Mario Golf hits, it might be pretty hard to find a new physical copy out there. But it's interesting strategy. And I don't I don't like his thing. I own a copy and I kept thinking to myself, would I own a copy of 3D All Stars if I didn't do this? Because I think I'm the consumer they were trying to target and someone who really wasn't interested in it in the first place. Not because I don't like the games, but because honestly, I'm not a person that replays games a lot unless they're very specific games like Zelda games. I replay those. But I don't really replay Mario games like Mario Odyssey. Haven't touched that thing in two years. Haven't had a reason to. They didn't release DLC. So haven't had a reason. Which I'm kind of surprised. They haven't, you know, well, that's a little bit surprise. That's that's actually one of the rumors out there that that's why we're getting Mario Odyssey 2 eventually here because they had so many ideas for content. They said, hey, let's make a new game. Yeah, supposedly is what happened with Breath of the Wild 2. Right, right. Yeah, who knows. So I think that when I think about what they're doing in Mario, I just think they are making a situation, creating a situation that in hindsight, they don't need. But then again, did it work because I ended up buying one? But did I buy it because of the fear of missing out? Or did I buy it because my YouTube channel was blowing up at the time? Yes, it begs the question like maybe they didn't need to do it, but they still made a lot of money doing it anyway. So there's no reason not to just because you don't have to. I think I don't have to eat a bucket of Nutella sitting on my couch at 10 p.m. But I still do it. Yeah, OK. So my thing is fine, discontinue the physical. I mean, why get rid of digital? Why do you have to lose getting rid of digital? Like, it doesn't. I guess because there's that there's that idea of like, I have a game that people who put it off, put it off buying it. They're like, well, I already bought I played Mario 64 way back. I don't need to buy it. And then they put it off or whatever. I could just get a digitally later. But if you if you cut that off, then that urgency is there. So basically, so what you're saying is I could take my switch, go out to my kids when they get like new switches later this year and be like, ha, ha, you can't play this game. Fuck you. That's exactly like that, too. Exactly. That's exactly what you intended. No, I guess the good part of all this is the memes about with the memes of Sephiroth stabbing Mario. Oh, God, the memes of Nintendo. Yeah, the memes are classic. The memes are great memes. So yeah, OK, so they're doing it. There's nothing we can do about it. The question is, do you like you guys like what they did for the 35th anniversary of Mario? To keep in mind, they have celebrated like the 25th before in 20th, just like they did with Zelda. But do you even remember what they did for the 25th and 20th for Mario? Does anybody they had an All Stars pack for the 25th, didn't they, on the Wii? But it was just the Super Nintendo Super Mario All Stars. Yup, same thing that they did this time around, too. They did that on the lines of this time. But like, right, they didn't go all out like this. They actually went all out and somehow did it without a brand new mainline Mario game. But I think they got away with it because Bowser's Fury. Have you guys tried a game out yet? Oh, I've beat it twice. It's great. It's so good. I don't think Eric's tried it yet. I'm telling you right now, Bowser's Fury, which is. What are you talking about? You have to mark 31 Bowser's Fury. No. Oh, yeah. I know you played it on stream. But I mean, I mean, I played it. No, but still, it was really, really good when I play it. Yeah, it was really, really good when I tell me if you think that's what the future of the Mario series should be. Because it was insanely incredible, especially right up to the end. It had a really great ending. And I'm not going to spoil it for people who haven't got there yet. It I feel like that kind of vindicated that we didn't release a new mainline Mario game, but hey, we gave you this, which is kind of teasing you for what a new game. Are you talking kind of the open world? You can go wherever you want, get whatever, start, start. Yeah, one type. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the freedom. The perfect marriage of Odyssey and 3D worlds in my view. But there was actually some theories that the Bowser's Fury expansion was originally DLC for Mario Odyssey that they retooled so that they could resell 3D world and tack that on at full price. Yeah. And I mean, not a bad. I can see that because the progression, the way you collect the shines, it all does feel very Odyssey, but in 3D world with the power ups and everything. But like they pretty much all the challenges that you need power ups for in that you could have had an enemy in Odyssey that you capture and and use for those in theory, right? So I don't know. There's a theory that they might have retooled that. And I'm like, oh, it makes some sense. But they even added the dive from Odyssey into 3D world to add to Bowser's Fury. So that wasn't any original game. So like you talked about marrying Mario Odyssey and 3D world together. I don't know that you've got the open sandbox world of Odyssey, but you've got 3D worlds, controls and power ups. And Plessy and all that good stuff. Sure. It definitely just feels like the perfect, the perfect mesh of those two. Sure. I could see that. Ice. Well. And and Odyssey had like a whole world themed after Super Mario 64, for example. Oh, yeah. Yeah. What's to say they didn't have planned other themed worlds after other games, including they could have had a 3D world themed world that was this. That was this. You're right. You're not retooled it to fit in here. Oh, totally. It's an interesting thing. I do. I kind of want to see Bowser's Fury become a full game someday. Yeah. And I think maybe that was the thing we wanted to test as he always received. If people like it, let's go this way, because Mario Odyssey was like open world, but still not the levels were still a lot of pain. Yeah, this is open, which, by the way, if I remember, is exactly like what what 3D world's like, they're all self-contained levels. You can go anywhere you want within the level, but they're self-contained. True. But the way they're designed. Yeah, the way they're designed to be very linear. Whereas Odyssey is very sandbox. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So it was just an interesting thing to see them do it the way they did. So if anything, I feel like the 35th anniversary of Mario was done, I guess, of what as well as they could do without having a new mainline game. I mean, if you think about it as starting with the release of Paper Mario ending with, I guess, the content in Animal Crossing. It feels like, you know, in between there, that it's so much. I mean, we got AR Mario Kart for crying out loud. It doesn't get enough pub like that. It's incredible. Maybe it's because people are stuck inside. So like everyone's waiting to make all these courses with their friends and they can't right now. But like, dude, it works incredibly well. And you expand that into all the other stuff they've released from the hardware. And obviously, you know, there's some things people are happy about, like the handling of the pin sets and how hard it was to get those. I mean, they did a good job. I don't know what else to say other than I'm disappointed, mostly in 3D All-Stars going away. Yeah, what they did is working. So I mean, I mean, it's working for Nintendo. Right. No, that's what I'm saying. I'm not saying customers. I'm saying Nintendo. But we should be worried about the customers more so than Nintendo, shouldn't we? Not like we work for them. No, no, doesn't give me. No, I know. I know. Nintendo has money. I know. Nintendo has my money. That's the problem. But as a business, that's what you that's what all businesses think about is how do I make money? And they're making the correct decisions. I'm guessing just based on them making money. And they do make a lot of money. Um, all right, so. I know this next topic is going to end up diving a bit into Switch Pro, but because the article itself did a Bloomberg put up a new article about Switch because a bunch of analysts feel like Switch peaked in this last fiscal year and is now on the downswing, which probably coincides with the fact that PlayStation 5 X-Wayster is actually selling out and clearly are popular and the thought process that they're going to have a bunch of major games coming out, Nintendo doesn't necessarily have any massive software currently announced for this year. So two and three isn't, you know, potentially a year or more away. And the biggest game is what? Mario Golf Super Rush. If you don't care about, you know, a we HD port. So, yeah, you could talk about New Pokemon Snap. Most people don't feel like that's going to do incredibly well. I think it's going to sell incredibly well, but some analysts don't think it's going to. And then, yeah, we have Brilliant Diamond and Brilliant Pearl, probably this holiday. But again, lukewarm reception to that as well. So Nintendo doesn't seem to have like the big, exciting hitters announced yet. So analysts are like, look, everything else is coming. The other systems are about to have their big games land. Sounds like Starfield for Xbox is being announced this summer as a big holiday game. Halo Infinite is going to be coming. PlayStation is starting to get their lineup ramped up. And Nintendo is just kind of sitting here like, OK, we got Skyward Sword HD. We got Mario Golf. Are you good? So analysts are like, man, Nintendo's on the downswing now. But not so fast, according to Takahashi Machizuki at Bloomberg. He has said and noted that Nintendo has ordered 250 million physical Switch cartridges. Lord, that would be an all time physical sales record for Nintendo in a single year. This is even before the age of digital sales. That is nuts. Now, granted, all those don't have to be necessarily for this year. It could be for 2022. But the point is they've never had an order this big before. They're all going to the same game. 50 million. Yeah, 250 million ordered. And obviously, Takahashi Machizuki is on the train that, hey, my sources are saying new Switch hardware is coming this year as well. That'll boost things this holiday. OK, so like, do we think Nintendo Switch entering the midway point, according to Furukawa, is actually starting to go maybe maybe it's plateaued now. We're going to hit the downswing. Maybe the plateau was Animal Crossing. And now we're we're going to start sinking down because the thought process, I suppose, and for most analysts is Nintendo system typically peak in like years two and three. The peak for Switch took a little bit longer and maybe it maybe theoretically it would have peaked in 2019. But then the pandemic happened, which boosted all system sales for everyone. So the pandemic added that extra peak. Do do we think that regardless of what Nintendo has to announce, which we know, Breath of Wild 2 is in the worst, you know, Metro Prime 4, Splatoon 3, those three we know for sure. Plus Bayonetta, which isn't really that big of a sell. Actually, Metroid isn't technically that big of a seller traditionally either. So like, yes, Nintendo likely has some big sellers in the pipeline. Mario Kart 9 at some point. There's Mario Odyssey 2, right? Mario Odyssey 2. I've seen Breath of the Wild 2. There's there's got to, you know, we're not going to get another Smash Bros. this January, but because they're going to melt Smash Bros. like crazy. Guys, the next platform Nintendo brings out. Ultimate is just going to get ported with all the LC for 60 bucks. You mean like Mario Kart 8? Well, plus I think Smash Ultimate, there's an interesting conversation we'll have someday where I don't think Sakurai would would allow that. I think he would be the one to be. No, because people said that Ultimate was just Smash for Wii U ported with DLC and which is totally wasn't it was totally not not at all the same game. But I feel like it goes. Oh, the characters are HD, similar character models. It's like, well, yeah, we already HD their models. We don't have to replace the entire character every game. Right. Are you dumb? Oh, God, that would link looks like Lincoln. Mario looks like Mario. Who the hell knew? Right. Yeah, it's as soon as you like, I feel like as soon as you boot up that game and hold a controller, you can feel it's a completely different, completely different game. But but I don't know. I almost feel like Sakurai would would be like, no, we're going to go all in on this again and all in and build it from the ground up. And because he's a mad lad like that, so he works himself to death. So so do we think switches on the downswing? I mean, do we have we hit the peak years and now are we kind of in the slow downturn where sales are just going to kind of slowly get worse to your near or as Farakawa has said in the past, fall off a cliff, which he's trying to avoid the cliff now. But it doesn't mean that it's not going to fall, even if it's not a cliff. Good. I don't. Is that people and analysts always seem to assume doom and gloom for Nintendo, the Nintendo was doomed. And that's never the case. I mean, only for kids. Yeah, even though they're on, we have to be fair. 3ds was the worst selling handheld of all time for them. We use the worst selling home console. Yeah, this is if we don't come virtual boy, which is true, which people like, oh, is that a handheld or is that a home console? I'm like, well, it's Nintendo as a handheld, but it was like neither. It was a tabletop system, like one of the only tabletop systems in existence, and it sucked. So here's the thing is that I had had a couple of years there where they lost money for the first time since becoming a video game company for two straight years. They had net losses, which had never happened in the history of the company. And at that point, I get it. The doom and gloom should be out. Nintendo isn't doing well, but like Nintendo is doing well now. And I guess everyone wants to be that savvy person that predicts that Nintendo is doing well. But when is that cliff coming? I want to be the one that predicted when that cliff is coming. And I keep thinking, look, I don't think they're in trouble this first half of the year, I think with the other systems not being easy to grab with the pandemic still technically going on into the summer and with enough solid releases coming out. You know, I'd say New Pokemon Snap, I'd say obviously much under rise is more than a solid release coming coming this month. Like really soon, guys, whether it's big in the West, I don't know, but it's going to be massive in Japan. And then obviously I think Skyward Sword HG is going to end up selling incredibly well and it's going to outsell the original release quite easily, I think. So definitely I think that's a solid first half of the year. But it's not, you know, you don't have like that that that must have game somewhere in there, right? Unless you're a big Monster Hunter fan, there isn't that must have game, which by the way, I'm super. I mean, to me, it's Mario Golf. Yeah, that's my must have game. But that's because they added an RPG mode that I pray they don't mess up. Knowing Nintendo's history with sports games, it's going to be messed up. But it's it's Wario's fashion. I'm hoping Wario Wario is why am I in that game? I love Wario. So I think we just need to be patient. I think if Nintendo really did order two hundred and fifty cut million cartridges, that's not and that's in that's in addition to what they expect to sell digitally. Then they clearly have major games landing. They just haven't talked about yet because I feel like people are forgetting that Nintendo under Furukawa seems to have changed their strategy. So they used to announce games way early, way early and technically they just did with Splatoon 3. But lately, a majority of their games, Paper Mario, would they give us two month run up? Announce release, what they would they do for Age of Calamity? One month run up. Announce release done. So four million copies. It's like clearly they're doing these shorter run ups. Mario 35th anniversary. They were planning to do that at E3, but it didn't happen. So there was a short. But I feel like they do that. So with games, I feel like with games that they know are just going to sell, they have no hesitation about announcing it. So Splatoon like Splatoon is huge, especially in Japan. So they know Splatoon 3 is going to sell there. So they've got no problem with the Wilds and because it's 20. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So for the sequel to Breath of Wild, it's going to sell. It's going to sell really well. So they have no hesitation about announcing it early because no matter how early they announce it, it's going to sell. Whereas these other games where I almost feel like if they're unsure about how well it's going to do, they're going to hold off to the last minute. And then when they announce it and it's fresh on people's mind, it's still it's still fresh on top of mind by the time it comes out because they like only barely just announcement. I'll say this, were they really hesitant about Age of Calamity? Age of Calamity is I feel like maybe because Hyrule Warriors was kind of like the first Hyrule Warriors game was kind of received lukewarm, you know, there was a lot of hype up to it. And then it came out, it was a little lukewarm. So I almost feel like they were hesitant because of that. But it obviously did end up selling really well. It's a great game. But I don't know. I don't know. That one is a bit of an outlier. But a lot of the other games like that have traditionally just sold super well are always the ones that they seem to be quite out the gate with years even in advance. So lately at least. So I don't know, I could be totally off the off marker. And then again, then again, an unannounced game can never be delayed. That's also true. Because if the public doesn't externally delayed internally. Yes. But if because if the public never knows about it, if it's delayed a year, it doesn't matter. But you could say that about even a game as long as they don't put it at release date because I've tried people like people. Oh, Breath of the Wild delayed in 2022. I'm like, Breath of the Wild hasn't had a release date. What are you talking about? It was never. We have no idea. We can't delay a game unless they say when it's going to come out. So it's like, oh, they announced it. I'm like, sure. But technically, they didn't even say it was for Switch when they announced it. They just announced it. It said Breath of the Wild sequel is now in development. That's it. They didn't say development for Switch. Literally, it could be not coming up for three, four years. So I mean, it should. Yeah. But you know, like. So I think that's a key thing that I think there's some interesting marketing strategies going on. So Sony has always done that. We're going to tell you everything like five years in advance and our games will come when they're ready. And it seems to work for them. Their systems keep selling, you know, over 100 million and their games have been increasing in sales. PlayStation 4, their games finally started selling like Nintendo Game Cell, which is, you know, 10, 20 million. That's that's really good. So their strategy clearly has been paying off. Obviously, Xbox's strategy is now all about Game Pass, even when they talked about their recent acquisition and about Bethesda that sit down round table and Phil Spencer is like, Hey, just telling you right now, we bought these people to put these games on Game Pass, period, exclusively on Game Pass. Done because they are pushing Game Pass. They want it to be like Netflix. And I know somewhat there's that one commenter out there is going to tell me, oh, Netflix hasn't made money in 10 years. You're right. And guess what? They are now projected to make profits starting this year and every year moving forward. Why didn't they make profits the last 10 years? Because they invested in themselves and got away from other people's content and invested in creating their own. Yeah. So now all the all the billions of dollars that have been invested by all their investors are going to pay off. Yeah. Same thing with Spotify. Didn't make all this money all this time just last year. Turned massive profits and is already way in the green this year, too. These streaming services that Microsoft is going down now with X Cloud and Game Pass. It's not about profits now. It's a decade. It's a decade long process to dominance. That's their strategy. Sony and Nintendo seem to have a similar strategy in the moment in that we're going to just keep releasing a bunch of exclusive games for 60 or in PlayStation 5 case, $70. And we're just going to keep banging that traditional drum until nobody wants to support that traditional drum anymore. So for Nintendo, when I look at the switch, I don't think I think the switch sales could be flat this year. I think looking at last year, considering their entire fiscal year, you know, which we don't have the final results for you guys, because it's not over yet. This is the last. We're in the last month of Nintendo's financial fiscal year. So we don't have final sales. We're not going to have them till April 6th or something. Or is it May 6th? I can't remember. They announced already when they were going to do it. But so I'm assuming we're going to see Nintendo projected 24 million. I think it probably exceeded that. And it's probably a 26 million or so sales. So like, I think they could just do that again. If you think about it, they did it last year and the biggest game was Animal Crossing, which is a huge game. But it came up like before the start of the fiscal year. So I think Nintendo has something. They have probably at least two major games in the second half of the year, and they know it. Now, to need 250 million, you know, software cartridges, I don't know what they need those for. That has me thinking it's something they feel like is going to sell 15, 20 million plus easy. Obviously, they probably think Pokemon's are for sure 10 million. But besides that, I'm like, well, what games could they have that could sell 15, 20 million plus? It'd be another Mario Kart game. And also people think, oh, they won't do it. Eight Deluxe. I'm like, why? So eight Deluxe, congratulations. Eight Deluxe is moving 800,000 units a quarter. What sounds better, 800,000 units a quarter? Or let me get 20 million in a quarter. Yeah. And then that game is going to continue to sell multiple millions every quarter. Like, yeah, like, oh, they're not going to release Mario Kart 9 because Mario Kart 8 OK. And Mario Kart 9 is going to sell even better every month. So why wouldn't they? Like, it's it's done. They'll be leaving money on the table. And because it comes out so late in the life cycle. Guess what's going to be a day one port to their next gen platform? Mario Kart 9. So like Deluxe. I don't understand the logic of this game sold super well, so they won't release the sequel to that game. Because it keeps selling well. Yeah, but even still, even even if it's still selling well, like you said, the only game because even the people who are like like me, who are wish washy on Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, I still haven't bought the game. But it's always that one that's always kind of like I'm always I always feel like I'm on the cusp of buying it. Yeah, but if they so so people like me who are wishy washy nine comes out, I'll be like, yeah, I'll buy it right away. Sure. Yeah. Because the reason I wishy washy 8 is oh, I bought the first. I bought the original. And I needed to wait. And when is this going to drop for nine? What a Zelda in the deals. Oh, come on now. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. It's so I feel like that would be the push to. OK, now I'll go by Mario Kart. And everyone who's already bought 8 Deluxe is going to jump to Mario. Oh, no, it's nine. Definitely. Yeah, yeah. I feel like the only game they have where you could argue a sequel is tough in the same gen. Well, Smash Bros. It just takes to a game. And now I don't know. After Ultimate, I don't know how you follow up Ultimate at all because any reduction in characters for a new. Oh, it's going to be there's going to be a backlash galore. And so I don't know. I feel like they're going to milk Ultimate a whole another gen. I think they're going to ultimate deluxe it for a gen and just not just leave it on the back burner for a decade. Plus they'll keep adding stages and characters to it. Yeah, maybe they'll even do a new fighter pass for it. Yeah, next gen or something. I don't know. Future switching if it's going to survive. Well, yeah, I think it's going to do just fine. Oh, yeah. I think the concept is is novel. And yeah, no, for sure. I I think right now we're just kind of in a in a in a downturn. Like a kind of a camel pump. I see it coming back up here. You know, the pandemic, I think, hurt a little bit. They kind of messed with their plans, I'm guessing. But did it? I it benefited them in a lot of ways. To a certain extent. Yeah. I mean, it's put it this way. Switch sold out during its fourth year on the market and you couldn't find it in stores. And it wasn't because they stopped making it like, yeah, they had a slowdown in manufacturing, but they're still almost sold 30 million. In its fourth year and they've never had a platform come out in peak during the fourth year. Right. So clearly the pandemic helped them. Didn't hurt them. I'm talking games wise. Sure. You know, kind of the low all in games. I think the pandemic possibly screwed with their. We don't know because we're never going to know if Breath of the Wild 2 is going to put on my player essence and tell you about how, hey, guess what? Switch actually didn't have a low in games in 2020 and actually released just as many games as they did a year before. I mean, I'm going to say factually, there was plenty of new games and plenty of ports as well. I'm just saying that like, yeah, I say and we're crossing. But think about it, they ended the year strong with a new game. OK, so we technically got to do Mario. OK, yes, the number of games may have been Mario, but the quality of games, the major hitters. So you're saying that the Mario Kart home circuit is not a quality hitter for you. Hey, Age of Calamity is not tickling that. Yes, Age of Calamity, doing Animal Crossing is just garbage. Well, I wasn't much of an Animal Crossing fan to begin with. So there's that. I mean, oh, here we go. I know. Here we go. Paper Mario is just now just to throw that in the garbage. It doesn't matter. No, but but Eric has a point because the like you look at the switches launch here, you have Zelda, Breath of the Wild, huge Mario Odyssey, Splatoon, that's a crazy launch here just to have just those three as opposed. And, you know, there's all the other little titles here and there. But that that launch here, that's that's a great lineup. And it's almost hard to like live up to that. Well, but Nintendo did that intentionally because we tanked. Oh, yeah. We don't know which is going to be successful. We're going to give it everything we have and pray it works. For sure. For sure. But I can see a lot of people being kind of not that they're right about it, but I can understand the perspective of saying that it's not as good a year. Here's what I'll say. Here's what I'll say. Look at what happened in 2017. Then look at what happened in 2018. It felt like kind of a down year in comparison, right? Then we got to 2019. Boy, they blew us the hell out in 2019. Astral Chain, Damond X Machina, Luigi's Match at three, Pokemon Sword and Shield, I can't forget enough couple two in there. Then they have like two or three other Starlink Starlink Starlink. Well, I mean, that wasn't Nintendo, but I think I came out in 2018, actually at the end of 2018, maybe it was 2019. It was in that same same E3 as the other ones. But I think that I think no Starlink was at E3 2018. Was it? OK. Yeah. That was the first time. Yes. OK. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't at the last one. The last one, remember, was Pokemon Sword and Shield? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they had Link's Awakening. Big Luigi's Match. Got it. I'm losing track of my years and which ones we've... We haven't been to that, man. No, I know. How old are you, Eric? Dude, my memory is terrible. You know what? It's time for you to retire from the podcast. You can't even remember what we've done. You bastard. It's only been three times. One was all Zelda, so that's easy to remember, nothing but Zelda. But the other two years, they're very distinct that what we did those years. Sure. I can tell you every game I touched at every E3. I know. There you go. I don't have that. I just don't have. This lets you draw out, guys. It's official. Eric hasn't been a gamer in 20 years. Oh, no. That's right. I'm kicking you back to, like, mid-teens. OK. 13. 13. 14. Sure. Before you became all about your band and your friends and stopped having our all-night game sessions. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. I haven't been a gamer since then. It's just official. All you guys watch are, like, man, I wouldn't remember everything I do at E3. And Eric's like, he's some industry veteran that's been a 30-LM. I've had so many great memories. I can't even recall them all. That's just how it goes. It's also been a couple years. I just don't keep that part of things in my memory. Yes. I remember playing games. You remember Fat Tomato Pizza. Damn straight. See what his priorities are? The food we eat while we're here. Have you seen me? Yeah, but that suggests that you're a gamer that lives in his parents' basement. Well, second floor. You're on the same level. You're all good. Same level. Yeah. I'm not in the basement. No, that was when we were kids. He's gamed in the basement at both houses. Yeah, we did. But no, enough teasing. Let's get into the last topic. Zelda's 35th anniversary. Now, we did a whole podcast on this a bit ago, but I know that Captain Berguson happens to be a pretty big Zelda guy over there. I do the Zelda videos. Because, I mean, he does Zelda videos. Hello, Dragon Break. You guys seen that video on my channel? That was him. That was all him. Way back in the Zelda Informer days. In fact, Zelda Informer is how I met him. So, what do you realistically, not wishful thinking, realistically think that Nintendo is going to do for Zelda's 35th anniversary? Keep it in mind that it seemingly seems like in the past for the 20th and 25th, they did more than they did for the Mario anniversary. For some ungodly reason. I think it's because Zelda fans just buy up merch so they know they can do... You know, like everyone loves Mario. Mario sells appeals to everybody, but Zelda fans are... Whoa, whoa, whoa. That's not... That was our fight, because I love Mario. Yeah, well, I mean, you're not wrong considering that if I remember correctly. He has a plumber. In the original Mario... Super Mario Brothers, were technically Toads. Were they? If I remember right in the war. Oh boy. So whenever you were breaking blocks, I'm pretty sure you were... He's correct on this, he just redeemed his gamer card. Alright, I don't know that little nugget of history. Alright. I'm almost positive. He's pulling, I was gonna, did you know gaming had? Well, actually, actually also too. If I remember correctly as well, in the pamphlet for the original Mario 2, it says Mario is our hero in parentheses, maybe. Maybe because... Maybe they just... I don't know, I could be wrong. Eric, I could be wrong. Absolutely. Someone better fact check him, because I'm not going to bother to do it. I'm geared to... Someone better fact check him, because he's trying to redeem his gamer card right now. And he might have just did it masterfully. He just proved to me, he's a Mario savant, and I'm just an idiot. Alright. Bitch. I am an idiot. Sorry. Back to Zelda. I'm sorry to interrupt you. What do you think you're going to do? Well, trying to temper my expectations, of course, but I feel, first of all, I don't think they're going to announce anything until Skyward Sword HD has had a chance to sell, because if they came out the gate and they're like, oh, Breath of Wild 2 is coming, or any other announcement that's hype as heck, it will completely overshadow and undermine Skyward Sword's divisive already existence. And so, which by the way, it's a great game. Definitely go give it a chance, guys. It's great, and it's going to be great on Switch. I just did a video about why you guys should play it. Go play it. It's awesome. Go watch Nate's videos. But yeah, I feel like they know Skyward Sword sold pretty poorly on the Wii. They know it's divisive among the community, so they're going to want to keep the spotlight on that to make sure that it sells properly. And then I think after the end of summer, maybe September, around that time, late August, early September, they're going to come out. We're going to have a proper direct, I hope. I really think they will. And I think that it'll be fairly comparable to the Mario 35 stuff. They're going to probably have it release games up until like the end of the first quarter of 2022. What those games are, I couldn't say for sure. I don't think it's going to be the sequel to Breath of the Wild. I don't think that game is coming out until probably late 2022, but I think we could see some other ports or collections or something like that. That's my unpopular opinion. All right, time to turn the TV off. No, I guess I was never getting posted. No, I really don't think Breath of the Wild is coming out this year because I feel like if it were, we'd be hearing about it. But what about by the end of March 31st? They ran Mario through the 31st. I could see it coming out for March, around the time Breath of the Wild turns five. Then, you know, Breath of the Wild is off to kindergarten and it's sequel comes alive. So I'm just trying to keep the hope alive, trying to keep the hope alive. I think more realistically, we're looking probably the later end of 2022. Not to be pessimistic, but I just think that we'd be hearing more about it if it were coming sooner because it's not like... I know what the marketing strategy lately has been. Not the marketing strategy. Because they already announced the game. They just have to tell us when it's going to come and it's going to sell. Right. Think about it like this. Think about it like this. I'm going to use Breath of the Wild as an example because they announced that at E3 2014, showed it a little bit at the game awards and then boom, didn't see it again until they announced it's going to come on the platform. We got an 11 second teaser for it the next year when they were showing Twilight Princess HD and then they said, don't forget the next Zelda game is coming out only for Wii U. Yeah, I remember that. That was bad, that was bad. But put it this way, when they announced it was, quote unquote, delayed, we didn't see it again until E3 2016. And the only reason it didn't go from E3 to holiday release is because the Switch didn't release yet. The game would have came out if the Switch were to release that holiday. But for some reason, and I think the reason was to line up their game releases because it wasn't that Mario and Zelda weren't ready, it's that they wanted to make sure the in-between games were going to land. They basically were like, dude, nine months we need something major every other month period and the story. Because we don't know what Switch is going to be a successful. So we want to hit it with Splatoon, we want to hit it at the right time with these releases. So clearly I think Switch was just pushed out to March just because they needed time to line everything up. But if Switch had released a holiday, there's no doubt that, yeah, so it would have breathed a while. So like, I look at it as, okay, let's say Nintendo chooses to participate in E3, which by the way, guys, I know E3's canceled quote on quote, but they are planning a digital event and Microsoft has now confirmed they are partaking in that digital event, which means that E3 digital event is going to happen. So if Microsoft's there, then Nintendo is likely going to be there as well. And if Nintendo's there, they could show off the game there and release it this holiday, which is probably what would have happened originally with Breath of the Wild. I don't know that Nintendo's there. Obviously Microsoft could decide to back out. I think they want to be there because they have a lot of big announcements from Bethesda they want to show off. So they want to get as big an audience as they can and they know that an E3 audience, even just online only, will draw in a bigger crowd than just their own Xbox channels. And Microsoft's fully invested in the future, not necessarily making money now because I think the only thing working against the ESA and E3 is that they're charging the same amount of money to be on these live streams as they do if you had a booth. Oh Jesus. But this isn't a physical booth and these places like Nintendo can just do their own directs on their own channels and don't need you digitally. That feels like a poor decision. And like here's the thing. Think about it in the past too. All the press conferences have happened over the past. ESA doesn't charge you a fee for the press conferences. You pay the venues where you're holding those press conferences at. You don't pay the ESA. You pay the ESA for showtime or for show floor space. Technically the press conferences were never ran by E3. I know. So I think that there's a situation arising at the moment where we need to be careful in thinking because I asked your opinion and I appreciate your opinion. I could be wrong. I would love to be wrong. None of us know. None of us know. And you're not alone in your opinion either. There's plenty of people that are thinking it's definitely not going to be true. They might be right. I have no idea. I'm at Nintendo. We do know Breath of the Wild 2 exists. Because they keep reminding us that it exists. They said we're going to see it this year. So at least have that to leave. Wait, didn't they see it? Let's clarify. There will be news. The news could be it's coming next year and we have nothing for you but a title. Cool. I would hope there would be more. I would hope it would be a trailer. We're going to get another 11 second tease. They have to have more. I have to have more. My thought is this. I don't think... I personally think Breath of the Wild 2 is already done. And I think it's been done. I think they're polishing it absolutely. And improving performance and all that jazz. But it uses the same engine. It uses the same art direction. They don't need 5 years even with a pandemic to turn around a new game. They're taking as much time from release as it took to get a brand new engine built for Breath of the Wild. They don't need that much time to do this. And not just the engine which caused delays for Breath of the Wild. But they are... I think Aonuma said that they are basically setting it in the same overworld as well. So most of the physical map is built for that. And they're going to do different changes and make it worth exploring again. My thing is they don't need 6 years to put together this game. And that's what they would be entering the next year towards the holidays. So I look at this as even with the pandemic just toss out a year of development. That's still 3 years of development. I can't imagine that they don't have something not only ready to show. But I think they're just waiting for the right time to release it. And I think what they saw was before last year happened, before the pandemic happened they always knew they were blowing out the 35th anniversary of Mario. They were going to do it at E3. They didn't just plan that overnight. They knew that in 2019 that they were going to do this. So they knew we're not going to release it during Mario's year. We're going to let Mario have it slightly. Maybe there's a Mario game that got pushed out of it. Maybe Mario Golf was supposed to be part of it at some point and that got pushed out. But whatever. They probably were always thinking look, that's fine 35th anniversary let's target it for Zelda and let's have it come out then. Let's make Zelda the focus that year and actually have a brand new game come out during that timetable. I'm not saying that it's been done since 2019 folks, but I'm saying I think it's been pretty damn far along. I think when we saw that initial trailer in 2019 that wasn't just like a tease of a concept of an idea like Breath of the Wild was in 2014 which by the way when we saw Breath of the Wild again later that year when they showed actual gameplay they had an overworld. They had the towers. They had the Sheikah Slate. They clearly we didn't know it was called the Sheikah Slate. We didn't know that's what they were using because they were using the Wii U GamePad. But they clearly were much further along in development at that time than just that little teaser at E3. And I think that's true here. I think they're way far in development here. And I don't know if you care about what Gabe over Jesse has to say, but it sounds like some voice acting recordings could be coming up that usually happens towards the end. We'll see. He's not willing to confirm or deny because obviously he's not supposed to know anything if he does know anything. But I'm just throwing out there that like if they're thinking about recording sometime like this summer or this spring I don't know it feels like I don't know. Suspiciously I'll just say this. Suspiciously the voice actors from the priors of the games have stopped appearing on podcasts. Not just your guys, it's in general. Because they were appearing on they've been appearing on podcasts consistently multiple of them for like the last three, four years. And now they just stopped and why would they need to stop maybe because they know some shit they can't talk about. And it's hard too hard to have them speak publicly and trust something isn't going to slip out. They're good at not talking about what you need. They are. On our podcast we had Sean Chiplock, the voice of Ravalli and the great Dekotri. And it was like only a couple weeks before Asian Calamity was announced. And we asked him all these questions and just never a peep about it or anything like he likes his job being NDA's success. He doesn't want to lose his job too. I'm sure it felt so silly for scheduling based on how Nintendo based on how Nintendo handles their like how they pay their employees I'm guessing that a voice acting job at Nintendo is probably a pretty sweet gig wouldn't want to blow the fact that hey you're the voice of some major characters in Zelda I want to be that voice so I want to be the Charles Matinee and be voice in this thing for 20 years. I'm not going to like Charles Matinee is talking everywhere and never says a peep about anything and he knows what he's been working on. Well, I mean when your lines are YAH, WAH, and WAH-HOO I mean Yeah, then he's got some new lines. He does he said it at a con I think two years ago that he does still record new lines for games. So like yeah, there are new maybe it's just because they don't want it to seem like it's the same WAH-HOO they've been using for 20 years but it's got to have a little bit of difference Mario has to age a little bit Don't worry, I don't need the voice of a lot of other Mario characters No, no, I know I didn't go WAH-HOO, I went WAH-HOO And then he just went WAH Yeah, there's a new voice for a new character The inflection was slightly different Well, I mean They're not against reusing things like for Yoshi I think Yoshi's Boily World was the first time they re-recorded new lines for Yoshi since Yoshi's story on the N64 They've just been reusing Yoshi sound bits for years, oh my god But Yoshi was also like not exactly a massive seller so they're like, why invest I mean Mario more diversity in his range of emotions Have they ever recorded a new sucking sound for Kirby? No, no, no I actually, even in Smash Bros. Ultimate it's the same sucking sound from the Game Boy I think the first two Smash games had a different sucking sound and then they, as like a design choice went back to like the Game Boy I'm pretty sure that's the sound effect It's a vacuum sound Yeah Let's go back to this classic Game Boy sound effect It's a stylistic voice It's a stylistic choice It also happens to be super easy It's all file size Yes, exactly Ah, Kirby See guys, yeah, you ever want to know as long as Sakurai is alive you'll never have to worry about Kirby getting proper treatment because he'll always get proper treatment in Smash games If you're a Kirby fan, don't worry about the actual Kirby games being made now Sakurai's got nothing to do with those But you want to see Kirby treat it with respect Why is he always the lead hero in a Smash game? Know your Kirby history, come on now Well, Sakurai claims it has nothing to do with that Yeah, no It's completely the character you invented is always like the primary hero Not Mario, oh no, Campy Mario in the mascot, that would make sense Oh, no, no, it's Kirby Everyone gets booted away and who's left The option between Mario and Kirby Everyone gets booted away and who's left Oh, it's Kirby Of course Kirby's left, but we're going to save the day But it's outrun it His ability That's why Sonic dies He was busy trying to save Pikachu Kirby's too selfish And that's the grand take away for this part Kirby is too selfish Damn it Alright folks, so I think I'm going to wrap it up here for episode 4 of the Detector 5 podcast We're going to thank our special guest, Captain Burgerson for coming on Do you have any new content or appearances you're going to be on that you can let him know about? Oh, of course, so you can always check out my channel It's just called Captain Burgerson There's a lot of Zelda videos And I just wrapped up a dungeon design analysis series on Ocarina of Time And it's a great, it's one of the most fun series I've worked on, I genuinely love it I'm sure it's an epically amazing and I'm jealous that you still don't make videos from my channel I'm sorry I spread myself quite thin sometimes to be honest Other than that though, you can always find me on Game Over Jesse's channel and the Hylian Gamescast which is a very nice Zelda centric podcast It's not quite as well-rounded Nintendo But, and occasionally I do some scripting and editing and voicing for videos there too So, you pretty much in every video of his, I at least had a hand in it, even though it's not always obvious, but usually it's even just consulting or tweaking his scripts and stuff, so, or fact checking him, so Yeah, you're the one that, I was wondering who fact checked from Okay, some of these things you're saying Jesse, I'm remembering you Someone's fact checking you because you used to get a lot of stuff wrong and now suddenly you're not Oh Well, I can't, Jesse's a super smart guy I can't take all the credit Well, especially now, he's doing a lot better now this year Obviously, I'm not going to get into the stuff that happened last year, he was talking to me about it It's pretty rough, but um Yeah, he had a rough year, but this year has been going pretty well on the channel there Oh yeah, he's almost 200,000 You guys should go subscribe to Game Over Jesse and subscribe to Captain Jason and, I don't know Anyone else you want to shout out while you're here? We have an audience of like 3,000 or so watching Oh gosh I don't know, the pressure's too high Any Twitter or anything like that? Social media? Yeah, of course Any and all social media is Twitter, Instagram Twitch, I do live streams of Zelda as well among other games On my first channel Also capped Bergersons, so It's great. Alright, well thank you guys Thank you so much for tuning in, that was a fun podcast And I'll catch you up I don't know, whenever I catch you again You and your Ewin racing chair I'm jealous It's my favorite color It's good I chose blue Alright folks, you can check out the podcast On all of your favorite podcasting Places, we have the audio version On literally everything from Spotify Through iTunes, Google Play It's literally Anywhere that you potentially have ever thought To listen to podcasts before, just look up Nintendo Prime Podcast, if you are Listen to the audio version, you can check out the video version And be sure to check out our YouTube channel Nintendo Prime Just search it right in the search And it'll pop up, we have a video version That I think looks pretty good Outside of the fact that we're totally not on camera right now Functions, we have a new camera So there's some quirks I gotta sort out with it Like why it's still on On the camera, but not through the HDMI cable I don't know, there's probably some setting I gotta mess with But it's okay I promise we will be back on camera In full next week Because I will sort it out Even if I have to get up every 10 minutes And hit record, I'll make it happen So don't worry folks, I got you Alright, thank you guys for tuning in Catch you in the next episode Bye