 Hey everyone, welcome back to another video at Nintendo Prime. And I know what you're thinking. You don't even have to, you know, tell me. You're down in the comments already typing it out. Clickbait! But it's really not, not today. You saw the title, that's right. It certainly looks like there's gonna be a Nintendo Direct this week and we're gonna actually talk about why that's the case because we're not like pulling this out of some rumor or some third party source or yanking this information out of anywhere but official documents filed by Nintendo themselves. So yeah, this is pretty exciting. And if it's not a Direct, it's something big either way. Beyond all of that, we are going to be talking about an update to a currently sad situation happening in the wider video game world to a major company, a sad situation for a number of reasons. We'll get into that. And beyond all that, we finally see the Switch OLED in the wild. We talked about that last week, right? Switch OLEDs in the wild and I showed you some pictures. We finally have video of Switch OLED in motion. So for whatever that's worth, we'll end up talking about that today as well. Now before I get into that, see this white Switch OLED back here? That's right, we're giving away one of these Switch OLEDs to one of you. All you have to do is subscribe to the channel and then tune into a live stream that we have happening next week, Friday. That live stream is linked down in the description right now if you want to go to it and set up your notifications and all of that. It's going to be a rather fun stream but yes, it will obviously at one point cap out with the giveaway. All right folks, let's just get right into today's Nintendo Switch semi-related news. So our first story is actually one that I don't even need my glasses. I don't need to read about it. The Switch OLED, it is actually out in the wild at Japan retailers. Now when I say out in the wild, no, you can't purchase it but they have actual display units on their floor and they're on the wall and you're seeing it right now. And honestly, it's really hard to get much out of this other than obviously noticing that yeah, there's less bezel, the screen looks bigger. It's hard to really denote color different, like how impressed are we supposed to be at the color differences here or the brightness of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe that it shows and obviously Metroid Dread because the person still nobody has held up another Switch running similar games. In this case it would be Mario Kart 8 Deluxe next to it to show the color differences or to see the vibrancy differences. Now notably, none of this is ever going to be as definitive as actually seeing a Switch OLED in person and holding it in your hand. But it's still baffling to be that people are capturing footage, we're not realizing maybe they should bring their own Switch and do some comparisons. It's why I kind of wish there was ones out in the wild in my area that I could go do that with and get some early comparisons in for you guys but we don't have to wait long. Comes out in a couple of weeks here, two and a half weeks and yeah, we will absolutely be doing an ultimate comparison where we compare the screens, we compare the internals, we compare the sizes, the different features, the different kickstand, we compare the docks and we will be actually tearing all of this stuff apart as well as the ultimate comparison. I hope you guys are looking forward to that because I know some people are actually curious about all the nitty gritties on the differences rather than just, oh yeah, we know it's a brighter screen. We know it's a bigger screen. We know it's got a better kickstand and a new dock but still, why should anyone who has a current switch be interested? And I feel like we might have better answers for that at the end of that video. It's almost a pseudo review of the product but not really because it'll be a day one video. So I can't really review something that I've only touched for a day but I can do a lot of comparisons and show you guys everything you need to know about Switch OLED. I move it on, we do gotta put the glasses back on for this one because we have quite a bit to read here. So there's been an ongoing lawsuit for a little while now against Activision Blizzard and it isn't good. I don't like to presume guilt before a court has ruled but also in cases like this with employees walking out, there certainly seems to be some validity to some of this stuff at least on the surface level and the way Activision Blizzard has responded hasn't been great. And maybe it's because of those responses, the federal government is now going after them. So before it was just the state of California, now the SEC part of the federal government itself is suing the hell out of Activision Blizzard and coming after them hard, subpoenaing many top execs, looking for exact documents. This is a big deal. This is a massive domino to fall and I'll explain why after I read what's happening here. So the Wall Street Journal reported Monday that the SEC has subpoenaed Activision Blizzard and a number of the company's key executives including CEO Bobby Kotik. Activision Blizzard confirmed the SEC investigation Tuesday in a statement to investors noting that it continues to productively engage with regulators including the SEC, the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, the National Labor Relations Board and the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing. The SEC requested documents from the company including minutes from Activision's board's meetings since 2019, personnel files of six former employees and separation agreements with the company that has reached this year with staffers according to the Wall Street Journal. And the Wall Street Journal article is locked behind stuff so I'm actually getting this from a different website. I'm gonna link to that website down below and the Wall Street Journal as well just for your sake of having all the information in front of you guys. The paper also reported the agency is seeking any records between Kotik and other executives discussing sexual harassment and discrimination allegations at the company. The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing sued Activision Blizzard in July over allegations that it created a hostile frat house environment in which gender-based harassment and discrimination were routine including someone who eventually ended up committing suicide supposedly over these allegations due to a sharing of naked photos. This is not something that I say lightheartedly. This is something that they are accused of directly in the lawsuit. It's pretty bad. Following an inflammatory response from the company's leaders who dismissed, that's right, they actually dismissed this lawsuit at the very beginning as the actions of unaccountable state bureaucrats literally dismissing that there's anything wrong. A group of employees staged a high-profile walkout. The protests attracted solidarity from many corners of the gaming world and drew more attention to the workplace environment in which many Blizzard workers allegedly suffered for years. There's no other way to put the story then. It's just a sad one. It's good in so much that I think a lot of us have been aware, at least in the back of our minds, and if you haven't been aware, open your eyes. Sexual harassment in the workplace is a real thing. It's been happening in many, many businesses. I don't know how many more times we need to see major players getting busted over this kind of behavior. And obviously, one thing that hasn't really happened is companies themselves haven't necessarily been held to task. It's always been like an individual who did wrong. Well, in this case, it seemed to be a company-wide thing, especially in the Blizzard branch of Activision Blizzard, but obviously happening under the umbrella of Activision leadership. So it's just not a good look. And honestly, I'm kind of glad that this is happening because this is what other American-based companies need is a public example made of somebody to maybe kick their own butt to reform, to maybe lessen or hopefully eliminate the sexual harassment in the workplace across the country. I don't know if this is going to be the case, but if Activision Blizzard can get in trouble, a lot of other companies could as well. So yeah, I don't really know what positive there is to take out of this, except obviously with the federal government involved, there's no running at this point. The state was already not letting go. Now the feds are involved. And the feds are looking for information. I mean, they even want to know what the exit contracts were. Like if you have an employee accused of sexual harassment, but they got a massive severance package, I'm not so sure the federal government's going to be okay with that, right? Like, oh, they left the company, but they also got paid $100 million. I'm not so sure. I mean, this is just a presumption, but if that happened, I'm not so sure the federal government's going to view that as a proper way to be dealing with sexual harassment in the workplace by rewarding people who are accused of it. Instead, it almost feels like while those people do need to be fired, that Activision is not admitting any fault while firing employees. In fact, they've been denying fault this whole time. Once this runs through the courts, I fully suspect pretty much all the top brass that Activision Blizzard will be gone. Any of the people that released the top brass during all this, including Bobby Kotick himself, I would be massively shocked if Bobby Kotick survives one of the biggest controversies of workplace environment harassment in the history of American business. There have been obviously other big instances as well. We're not going to go into all of them, but yeah, this is the biggest one that hit the video game industry to date. I don't know how he survives. I get that Activision Blizzard is still a massively profitable company. They have a lot of big games, Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, being probably the two big pillars that really hold everything up. But yeah, and the thing is, a lot of the people that were harassed also worked on those games and wouldn't want you to stop playing them. So I know a lot of gamers out there think the right move to do is to boycott their games. And I understand that to a fundamental degree. I also would say honestly, your boycott isn't what matters. These lawsuits are what matters because I don't really want Activision Blizzard to be dissolved and go away. I don't think that solves anything. It just eliminates or moves the problem to somebody else, right? Like, what we really want to see is the work environment get completely reformed and be open and accepting to everybody no matter your gender. And unfortunately that hasn't meant something that's been happening at Activision Blizzard apparently for some time. So again, we really just want to see some reform. Real reform happened at the company. And I understand it's gonna be hard to believe a company like this can reform but it is possible, especially if it starts to get federally and state regulated in that reform. I'm not saying the government is always the answer but when you have allegations including someone committing suicide over the things that happened at the company, you have some of the weird things come out such as the Cosby Suite. I'm not gonna go into all the details. You guys can go Google and research all this stuff for yourself. Let's just say that kind of stuff probably wouldn't be happening in any sort of public government office because they wouldn't survive the backlash. So I'm hopeful that this does lead to reform and hopefully leads to reform across the industry with any other company that's having similar issues. Hopefully not to this degree. I don't wanna hear employees are dying because of it but I would like to see reform and acceptance in the business world of video games. All right, so yeah, a Nintendo Direct might be happening Thursday. I know, I get it, I could be wrong. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you a Nintendo Direct is happening Thursday. What I will tell you is Nintendo has updated something that pretty much points to, if not a Direct, a massive announcement incoming. So remember last week, we talked about a controller that was filed with the FCC by Nintendo themselves to be unveiled March 6th, 2021. And we speculated obviously this controller could be an N64 controller for N64 online stuff, or the Switch, it is a Switch game controller but we don't really know any other details about it. We've had one minor update from them but that was just dismissing some of the other stories that are going on out there. But then Nintendo did something today that I don't think any of us expected. They updated their FCC filing. So let's get into the details here. The controller filing with the FCC has been updated by Nintendo and it now expires on the confidentiality agreement I should say expires this Friday. Now, what matters is when the confidentiality agreement expires, everything that's in the FCC filing is out there including what kind of controller is, what the controller is used for, et cetera, et cetera, and Nintendo will not be able to hide what this controller is and what it's used for anymore. Now, Nintendo changed their state, the FCC didn't change it for them. So yeah, Nintendo is setting that the confidentiality agreement with the FCC is done out for Friday. So just something to keep in mind. The filing also had additional details added that were not present in the original filing. It does not include the controller itself does not have NFC functionality. This is important because we now know it is not an updated Joy-Con. It is not an updated Pro Controller. Both of those would have NFC functionality. We can also dismiss them, you know, the argument that an Amiibo is somehow a controller. They've never been listed as controllers before but if that argument existed, it can't be an Amiibo because it uses NFC. All right, so what else is that? It does not have Wi-Fi functionality. Now, that sounds like a weird thing to even talk about with a controller but you could try to argue that the Mario Kart Live kart itself could be some sort of control input device sort of thing. I wouldn't say it's that but if you want to make that argument that uses Wi-Fi so it can't be something like that. Now obviously it could be something that uses Bluetooth that's still on the table and notably every controller on special uses Bluetooth but let's get into more here. There is only one listing for this controller. This is only notable because the Nest controllers for Nintendo Switch Online had two listings. One for the left and one for the right. However, Nintendo only had one listing for this Nest controller and there's one that goes on the left and one that goes on the right. I think it's more of a after the Nest they realized why do we need two separate listings for what's basically the same controller. So yeah, we're talking about the serial code and all that. So they're just gonna have one listing for whatever this is. And I think if they redid the Nest controllers today for the first time, it would probably only have one listing as well but hindsight is what it is. Nintendo is obviously condensing things as they go. So this is really, really interesting because when you think about what controllers this could be we talked about how even though with the Game Boy and Game Boy Color Rumors out there that there's not really a controller that you need for those. It's a D-pad and two buttons with start and select. We have that with the Nest controllers. We have that basically already with the built in Joy-Cons. We don't really need controllers for that. It shouldn't be GameCube controllers because GameCube controllers are already usable and have been re-released due to Smash Bros. on Nintendo Switch. So we already have GameCube controller support. We don't really need separate GameCube controllers. We already have Nest, we already have SNES. And as far as we're aware DS3DS and all that don't seem to be on the table as additions to Switch. Now it's of note, it could be some weird Pokemon thing. We can't dismiss, remember that little Pokeball plus thing that came with Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu, Let's Weavey. It's possible it's still something like that. We can't dismiss that but that technically already exists and they could just re-release it if it was just gonna be a Pokeball thing. So we don't really know what it is. But it sure as heck seems like these are N64 controllers and it sure as heck seems like we're gonna know that for sure on Friday. And if we're gonna know that for sure on Friday it would likely be announced already before you could pre-order them. So it probably announced on Thursday and Nintendo has never announced a major console addition to Nintendo Switch Online. Granted they've only announced two of them. But they've never announced either one of those outside of a Nintendo Direct. So the dots, the piles, the information is all kind of coming together to suggest Nintendo Direct on Thursday. Now we won't have to wait long to know because obviously Thursday's only a couple of days away and Nintendo does usually like to announce Directs ahead of time. Now they have done Nintendo Direct Minis, I think one or two of them without announcing them. They just dropped them the same day. So we can't dismiss that as a possibility on Thursday that there's a mini and this is like the big announcement in the mini. But highly likelihood sometime tomorrow morning, probably no later than 11 p.m. central time will we have an announced Direct. And if we don't, then you can start to be like, man, that's kind of weird that we're gonna know what this controller is before Nintendo announces it. That's pretty strange, isn't it? I think it's pretty strange. So we'll have to wait and see what happens. So if we don't get our Direct on Thursday, don't be surprised if we get a different major trailer unveiling drop for Nintendo Switch Online. Like, they're gonna do something. It just feels like everything's adding up to something. We think it's gonna be a Direct, but even if it's not, it's still going to be something. So keep that in the back of your minds as we head into tomorrow. It's kind of an exciting way to end our day because it kind of gets you, you know, it's a little bit excited, but as always, hype responsibly. It is on us as individuals to control how hyped and what our expectations become for these things. Again, I did note this might not be an N64 controller, could be something related to Pokemon, could be really a lot of different things. It's just when you look at the history of Nintendo's controller filings, this does seem to be what it's going to be, but it's still mostly speculation based on factual information. Anyways, folks, I'm Nintendo RoboJance from Nintendo Prime and I'll catch all of you guys in the next video. Oh, by the way, a little more caveat to throw on to the Nintendo Direct file. Alan Wick remastered, leaking through a Brazil listing. We had another combo pack game, you know, the classic collection with Aladdin and all this that was never technically officially announced for Switch. All of a sudden that got leaked out there. Likely would have been something in a Direct. I'm just throwing out there that there seems to be a lot of other things adding up to the Direct coming, let alone the fact we got this bad boy coming Switch OLED, Metroid Dread. You know, we have a Mario Party game we haven't heard about for a while. Updates to Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity. There should be new DLC coming for that. New updates for Mario Golf. There should be a lot of stuff coming that they need to talk about anyways. But it might not be this month. I'm not telling you it's gonna be this month, but maybe we'll have to wait and see. All right, folks, I am Nathaniel RuffleJance from Nintendo Prime and it's been a pleasure, folks. I'll catch you in the next one.