 Hey everyone, before we get into this episode of Prime News, I want to remind you to enter our Animal Crossing New Horizons giveaway. To enter the giveaway, all you need to do is comment on this video, like it, subscribe to the channel and hit that bell icon. You can enter on every single video we do for this entire month up through March 18th. The winner will be announced on March 19th and it will be a digital code. The winner will be announced on March 19th. Our first story of the day is actually about E3. The creative direction company for the floor of E3 has resigned. Very weird. Let's get into what they had to say. It is with mixed emotions that IM8Bit has decided to resign as creative directors of what was to be an evolutionary E3 2020 floor experience. We produced hundreds of gaming and community events and it was a dream to be involved with E3. We wish the organizers the best of luck. We don't know why they dropped out, we don't know if it's concerns over health, but we know they just dropped out and they have organized a lot of events for a lot of different companies from Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony, EA, Bethesda, etc. They've done things like the PlayStation Experience in the past. So they have a very impressive resume, although some fans have noted the floor experiences that they do tend to not be necessarily the most impressive experiences. Maybe they've gotten better over time, I'm not sure, I'm just going off of what other people have said. I've never personally experienced one of IM8Bit's floor experiences, but we don't really know why they backed out of E3. Maybe they've just presumed that E3 is going to be canceled, maybe other companies are contemplating behind the scenes of dropping out of E3. So I don't know, it could be a blow to E3, it could also be E3s getting canceled anyway, so it doesn't really matter. But yeah, the ESA obviously can't be happy with this news, maybe there's some stuff going on behind the scenes. Obviously we know Jeff Keely, who's been a big part of E3 for 25 years, is not participating this year, which is, you know, some of you guys might not care, but he has been a big presenter for the show for a long time. So I don't know, we'll have to keep hoping that E3 is even going to happen, but this is obviously not something the ESA probably wanted to happen as they probably knew about this before it was publicly announced. The Outer World on Switch is going to have a feature that is really needed and we should be thankful for. So Nate, one of the game UI designers for this game and obviously a developer for Obsidian has come out to post on Twitter proof that he has specifically been working on a scalar for the text in the game. Yes, folks, you might think what's the big deal about a scalar for text? Well when you take a game that's very text heavy like an RPG and you throw it on a system like Switch, there seems to always be some text issues at times where the text is just too small to read for a lot of people. Now I haven't had this issue personally, especially in portable mode on games like the Witcher 3, but there has been other games that have had a squint basically and they don't want that to be a problem. It was going to be a perceived issue since some people think the text is already too small in the game. Well, it won't be a problem now, so it's a very welcome addition and I really hope that all games, whether it's on Xbox or PlayStation or Nintendo, implement features like this because it just makes the game more playable for more people. We all have different eye sights, we all have different types of glasses we might wear from bifocals and trifocals, it's just best to make things as easy as possible for people and allow us to resize certain elements of the UI including text. So this is a welcome addition and I thank Nate for his hard work on it and hey, I put off buying this game on other platforms because I knew it was coming to Switch, so I can't wait to dive into the outer worlds for my first time later this year. This next story is actually like a tri-pack of stories, we've got three companies that have made some major decisions because of the coronavirus aka COVID-19, we've seen shutdowns of various events like game developers conference pushed to later this year, other events just cancelled outright, E3 might be going down because of it as well, but we have updates to three major events or three major things happening that unfortunately are kind of going in a direction we don't want to see them go. And the first up is the Pokemon Company, they have cancelled the 2020 Pokemon European International Championships due to the coronavirus concerns, here's what the Pokemon Company had to say on it. The safety and well-being of our community, both competitors and organizers is our top priority. While we prefer to never see an event get postponed or cancelled, out of an abundance of caution and pursuant to the current recommendations set forth by public health officials, we have cancelled the 2020 Pokemon Europe International Championships. And they're not alone, the people behind the TurboGraph 16 mini have infinitely delayed their project, which was supposed to release on March 19th, so it's infinitely delayed, we don't know when it's going to come, it might not even come this year, I don't know if it's because of production issues or just you know they're, hey we're not done with it and we're not going to force our employees to work in those conditions. And speaking of forcing employees to work in those conditions, Bungie, the people that are currently running Destiny 2, they are now independent of Activision. They have sent all of their employees home. All of their offices have been shut down, both in Seattle, which is where their headquarters are located, but also worldwide. That doesn't mean that they're necessarily going to stop working though, they're trying to make this work through working remotely, here's what they had to say on the situation. Today we have activated a fully remote work infrastructure and policy for all Bungie employees across the globe, with the goals of prioritizing the safety of our employees and continuing to develop and deliver on a game we love for our community. To accompany this policy, we have rolled out technical solutions for all employees to be able to maintain communication with one another, as well as to continue working on development and maintaining game critical functions while working remotely. Our goal is to continue crafting the ever-evolving Destiny universe, while making those behind the scenes efforts to keep everything running smoothly invisible to our fans. While there is a possibility that this change could affect our patching cadence in the short term, we will be sure to keep players informed about those schedules as much as possible. Most immediately, we will still be launching Season of Worthy on March 10th, followed by the start of Trials of Osiris on March 13th. And again, this was all done because of concerns over the coronavirus, covid-19, etc. There's been an outbreak in Seattle, so obviously their headquarters alone is trying to deal with it. Yeah, this is kind of sad to see all these things happen, but you know, when you have a worldwide crisis happening like this, or is it a crisis? I mean, the big thing to understand about the covid-19 and the coronavirus is if you're someone like me or a young adult, you're relatively healthy, you have a good strong immune system, we're not really a major threat of anything massive. For the most part, coronavirus will come to us in the past, just like a common cold does. But there's obviously elderly or children or people who are immunocompromised that could potentially die from this. So yeah, it sucks that this is the thing that's happening, but hopefully at some point it'll be passed. And maybe by summer. Speaking of summer, from August 25th to August 29th, Gamescom is happening, and they have announced their exhibitor list, and this is kind of big news because if E3 is going to go kaput, Gamescom is really the next major gaming event to look forward to after that, and then maybe Game Developers Conference if that does happen late summer. Here is the exhibitor's list. Astragon Entertainment, Bandai Namco Entertainment, Bethesda Softworks, Capcom Entertainment, CD Project Red, Electronic Arts, ESL Gaming, Calypso Media, Koch Media, Media Market, Microsoft slash Xbox, Mi.com, NC Soft, Nintendo, Sega, THQ Nordic, Twitch, Ubisoft, Wargaming, Alternate, AORUS Gigabyte, BenQ, Case King, Corsair, Kingston Technology, Median, Omen, Samsung, and Trust. Now this is a very impressive list. Obviously notably missing is Sony. It's interesting because Sony seems to be dipping out of anything that isn't their own event like PSX or State of Play. So interesting to see what happens. We're still in the announcement of PlayStation 5 and all that, but yeah, these companies are going to be there. And this very well could be the E3 of this year. Gamescom has actually successfully done what E3 had hoped to do and that's transition into something more consumer-friendly that also pleases developers. Gamescom is an event that isn't receiving the kind of criticism that E3 does and they seem to have nailed the event every single year it's been out. So kudos to Gamescom for getting it right. The ESA should probably take some notes. But hey, cool. Gamescom, as far as we know, is still happening. Presuming that obviously they don't have to cancel it, you know, I think they're kind of, I think the presumption is by the end of August we will have the coronavirus under wraps. A new horror game is coming out this fall for PlayStation 4 NPC called Amnesia Rebirth. It is a direct sequel to the original Amnesia game that came out, I believe, a decade ago. It's been a long time and I feel like this is notable. You know, there's a lot of game announcements that happen because we don't get a lot of major horror games in the horror genre because it's just not an extremely popular one or at least we're led to believe by developers is not an extremely popular genre. And, you know, as someone was waiting for a potential New Silent Hill from Konami and its Kojima Productions working on that behind the scenes, got back with Konami or whatever people are looking forward to, you know, because of PT back in the day, Amnesia, you know, Rebirth is actually something coming later this year. And the trailer looks pretty good. I can't wait to get more information on it because the original Amnesia has a very good, a very strong, very healthy cult following. So I can't wait to see what the new game does. But yeah, I mean, it's a major horror game coming and we don't get very many of those. So I'll take it. Hopefully, you know, it can come to switch sometime next year. We'll have to wait and see how the final game looks and performs and all that to know if that's even a possibility. And our last story, maybe the most exciting story, it is in the headline. I'm sure a lot of you guys clicked on this video because of it is the Nintendo Direct. Now, here is what has happened Thursday of this week. So yesterday, there was an update to the Nintendo Direct playlist in Japan. Last time they did that was a week before the Animal Crossing Direct. So the presumption is, now that there's an update on this past Thursday, that we're going to get a Direct next week Thursday. Now, this Direct should be a general Direct because they don't have a lot of more individual games to talk about, although they could announce DLC for a number of games if they really want, like they did with Smash and like they did with Pokemon earlier this year. But the presumption is, you know, if we're gonna get a Direct next week, then it could be that. Now, there has been rumors from people like Sabi in the past that we were gonna get a NINDI showcase of some time this month, but they tend to put the NINDI showcases in their own playlist and not the major Nintendo Direct playlist. That seems to be exclusively to, you know, mini-directs, general directs, and individual game directs. So we'll have to wait and see what happens, but I think it's pretty exciting. Obviously, we are long overdue for a Direct. The last one we got was back in September of 2019. We're approaching half a year at this point. So I'm pretty excited to see what happens here. Again, you can call it speculation and all we have to go on is recency. What has Nintendo been doing recently? Since Shintaro Furukawa took over, Doug Bowser took over in the United States, and it has been, well, when they update the playlist in Japan, we get our Direct a week later. This actually also happened, by the way, with the Smash Direct and the Pokemon one. So this actually isn't that abnormal this year. So according to the rule of Nintendo in 2020, we're getting Nintendo Direct next week. So forgive me if I don't get excited until it's actually announced. Anyways, folks, I wanna thank you guys so much for tuning in. I am Nathan DeRovell Jance from Nintendo Prime. Be sure to tune in later tonight at 9 p.m., or I should say 9.30 p.m. Central Standard Time for the Nintendo Prime podcast. We have a special episode tonight. And A, if you wanna submit topics or questions or ideas for that episode of the podcast or future ones, head on over to patreon.com slash Nintendo Prime for as little as $1 a month. There's a post that goes up. There's actually a post up for this week already, where you can go submit questions or topics or whatever surrounding the things we planned to talk about for that week. And then your name and your question and all that will be read off. And we'll discuss it right there live on the podcast. So it's a way to get yourself personally involved with the podcast without necessarily having to be on it, which you can be on for $20 a month as an optional tier on Patreon. You don't have to go that far. But if you would like to be on an episode every month, that is something we do offer. Anyways, thank you guys so much for tuning in. Be sure to enter the Animal Crossing New Horizons giveaway and I'll catch all of you guys in the next video.