 Hey, everyone, welcome back to Nintendo Prime. It feels really good to be back in our studio, even though it was a hell of a vacation for those who don't know. I've been gone the entire last week on vacation. Me and my fiancee went on a four or five day cruise. It was it was really, really relaxed and really great. We did come home to our basement flooded, including our studio because our hot water heater burst. But, you know, life is what it is. As you can see, I'm alive and kicking and our house didn't burn down, even though it almost did. So we talked about that last night on a stream. Don't really feel like revisiting it. So let's revisit the actual news today. We have some updates on the Nintendo Direct stuff, right? We've been talking about a rumored, a reported, a leaked, whatever you want to call it, you know, back the truckloads of salt up and all that. Put your tinfoil caps on. Look, the bottom line is I have no idea if we're getting another Nintendo Direct this month, right? We have the Xenobit Chronicles 3 Direct last week. And typically when we get that sort of direct, we don't get anything else. But Nintendo has been doing directs in June, every single year besides 2020 when there was no E3. There also was no E3 this year. And here we are towards the end of June. And we still don't have a general Nintendo Direct. So there's been a lot of rumors around us, a lot of reports from different media outlets. Alana Pierce said the next direct would be on the 29th. Nate, the Haysman saying 28th, 29th, depends on your time zone. But we won't specify which direct it is, well, until yesterday. And then we have Video Game Chronicle, Tom Henderson saying, hey, there would be something that kind of backing off it. It's been a really weird, weird ride. However, here's what's not so weird about this ride. Well, how about the fact that we now possibly know what this direct is? And we know some possible games in this direct. Now, Nate, the hate mentioned the other day a few days ago, that there would be, well, Mario plus Rabbids Kingdom Metal News next week. OK, that would make sense to our Kingdom Metal Sparks of Hope. Mario plus Rabbids Sparks of Hope News next week. And that would make a lot of sense to actually appear in Nintendo Direct 2022 game. Mario's in the damn game. Yeah, we need a date for that. But you mentioned it wasn't so sure about Bayonetta 3. Maybe Bayonetta 3 would be there. Maybe not, hasn't really heard anything. But it would make sense that Bayonetta 3 there. But what do you say today? And I have the treats littered up right in front of me here. Well, this yesterday, he said, to my understanding, it's a direct mini partner and its main focus will be third party that doesn't mean Nintendo will have no presence. They've had some presence in prior partners just in a limited capacity. And I obviously find that to be interesting comments because, you know, they really haven't had a presence in the partner ones. That's usually the big complaint is that Nintendo doesn't have a sort of presence. He does clarify later on the family board forums that what he means by presence is there could be like Nintendo published games that are made by third party companies. That would be Bayonetta 3, right? Like Bayonetta 3 is a game made by Platinum where the IP itself is owned by Sega, but Nintendo owns the publishing rights to Bayonetta 2 and Bayonetta 3. So that would be an example of a partner game. And I think that's the sort of games he's trying to set up our expectations for us. We might not hear about Nintendo first party. So don't know Breath of the Wild 2, Null Splatoon 3, stuff like that. But we could hear about new partner games coming from other companies. And this is where we get to a report that I popped up on Video Game Chronicle yesterday where they have a source on this that's from an interesting place. It's an actual journalist, but it's weird. So let's just read the exact quotes. So according to an experienced journalist named Nacho Requina and I'm probably butchering the name that our editor of a Spanish games magazine called Manuel told viewers during a Twitch stream on Friday that he even told to expect new announcements from major publishers. I quote, here's exact quotes as translated by Video Game Chronicles. If this translation is bad, I apologize. I don't speak the native tongue of Spanish. We should have a Nintendo Direct this coming Tuesday. Tuesday would be the 28th. Requina said during the live stream and this was translated by Video Game Chronicle. This will be mainly focused on third party games. That's what I've been told to expect. I've also been told that some persona game will be present. Remember we just had three, four and five announced for the Xbox. So, hey, are we gonna get three, four and five for Switch? Maybe. I've also been told there will be another game that's been available for some time on other platforms and it's been available for four years now. Some people are pointing to Red Dead Redemption 2, Video Game Chronicle does as well. Video Game Chronicle then goes on to basically assume that this is gonna be a Nintendo Direct mini partner showcase. Which, by the way, we got like three of those in 2020. People tend to not like them because they wanted first party stuff. Thing is we know some first party games coming. We know Breath of Wild 2's in early 2023. Pokemon does its own thing. So they're gonna, you know, we had a new trailer to be in this month for Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. So I think it's gonna be a bit before we hear about that again. We obviously just had a Direct for Xenoblade Chronicles 3 that comes out next month. Live Alive would be a partner game that would probably show up in a Direct like this. Splatoon 3, you know, will probably once they get into August, we'll probably start hearing a lot of news about Splatoon 3. So Nintendo's got a pretty decent lineup the rest of this year as is. And if you could fill it in with partner games like Bayonetta 3, the Persona releases maybe, maybe apparently a port of a four-year-old game that's a really, really big game, that could really fit the bill as well. So you throw all that together and hey, it ends up being a pretty solid lineup the rest of the year. Obviously, multi-platform games, you know, Nintendo isn't really the system you buy if you care a ton about multi-platform games. It's a system you buy if you want indie games on the go which you can also get a Steam Deck for that. And you get it to enjoy Nintendo stuff. That's mainly the gist of it. There was an appeal for a little bit of third-party games on the go but technically that's better on Steam Deck even though Steam Deck's really hard to get. So Nintendo's appeal is really their own stuff and maybe some really cool indies like Fall Guys being free to play on Switch now. And I believe the servers for Fall Guys are working now. Quote me on that. Also, by the way, remember Mario Striker's Battle League? Well, I haven't dived into the club stuff yet but hey, our club was number one ranked in our division as of like yesterday. So cool, we're kicking ass there too. So Nintendo's got games. We just had Fire Emblem Warriors, three-hove Strop. I currently am installing it. It's actually installing on my Switch right now. So we'll be checking that out eventually here as well and seeing if that holds up and if that's even better than the first Fire Emblem Warriors which the gameplay was fine in that game but the story really wasn't too great. This one being tied to three houses I think makes a difference. So look, what I'm basically trying to get at here is maybe this is just a temporary of expectations. No one is confirming 100% that it's going to be a direct mini partner besides Nate the Hater. And by the way, he doesn't know that they're calling it a direct mini partner just that it's to have that sort of expectation, right? Expect this direct to be focused on third party games including things that could be like Bayonetta 3, Sparks of Hope, which by the way, Nate the Hater won this and we're getting Sparks of Hope news next week. Like that's like, that's happening. So at least according to them, I obviously have no sources on any of this. I'm hyper reliant on these insiders and I do want to end this talk briefly. Briefly, by talking about covering rumors and covering inside information from supposed insiders, I understand that there are a group of you out there, I see you guys in the comments that really don't enjoy these kind of videos. And to that I understand covering rumors, talking about rumors, speculating, debating and having conversations about what may come, doesn't excite everyone. Like talking about this kind of stuff doesn't get everyone's brain churning in the way that it does for me. I really, really enjoy the conversation and the speculation and the reporting around all of this stuff. Even if it ends up not being true, which is unfortunate, say all the Switch Pro stuff last year, I still enjoyed the journey, the ride, the conversations, the debates, the deep dives and the different hardware possibilities last year. Like I enjoyed all of that, even if in the end we ended up not getting what we hoped. And I know because a lot of people feel burned by the Switch Pro stuff that suddenly, they're like, I'm just kind of tired of all this. It's weird because we have this same speculation, hype and rumors around the last Nintendo Direct that did happen back in February and people weren't really complaining then. We had a lot of this hype and speculation, by the way, around the Switch Lite and hey, that ended up being completely true. So it's interesting watching this ebb and flow of, I think so many people bought into Switch Pro last year that they feel so burned that they're tired of these speculative conversations around possible things happening from supposed insiders like Nate the hate who told us that Switch Pro was happening last year. So this is one of those things where I feel like people are just emotionally exhausted when it comes to this kind of stuff. Personally, I've been covering rumors guys for 20 plus years. This isn't new to me. You wanna call me rumor prime? I'm cool with that. I don't even find it an insult like some of you guys do. I don't cover just rumors. I know this feels weird, back to back videos covering rumors. I have an upcoming video that's actually dealing with something else. I had four videos in this last week that dealt with completely different things that weren't based on rumors. They were conversation pieces we had and one legit news story and they're about a cancer patient. So I cover a wide variety of stuff. I just haven't been back to covering prime news where I'm slamming five, six stories into a video because I've been having prime gaming fest this month and then obviously I went into vacation. So putting those episodes together takes up a large chunk of time that I had to spend on other things at the channel or on my vacation. That all being said, what I can tell you right now is my next video isn't gonna be about this kind of thing. It's actually gonna be talking about something semi-related, although it's not just about rumors and that is clickbait. I wanna have an open conversation on clickbait. I've had a conversation on this before and I wanna do a further one, a specific YouTube channel that many people detest for it. Did a video on it and I've watched and I feel like I have something to add because obviously I'm accused of it all the time. I'm probably being accused of it on this very video. And I'll just talk about the ebb and flow of how all that works, all right? That's all. So I wanna thank you guys so much for tuning in. I hope you really enjoyed this video. Let me know your thoughts on what you expect to see in this showcase. If I get sparks of hope, I'm happy. That's like the big game I want. Nate, the hate says it's coming. I got no reason to doubt it. He's pretty firm on it and I haven't heard Emily Rogers, maybe the only insider I trust more, really refute that because Emily Rogers leaked the original Mario plus Rabbids Kingdom Battle and has backed up Nate saying that he's legit and real and has sources and is a good dude. And for my little interactions with Nate, I can confer he's a pretty good dude. So thank you guys so much for tuning in. I am Nathaniel Rufflejans from Nintendo Prime and I will catch you guys in that next video which I don't know, so I might be dropping later today.