 So the other day I talked about the marketing in Tears of the Kingdom and Nintendo's strangeness with it and people, as always, like anything I do, there's always agreements and disagreements over my viewpoints on how Nintendo is choosing to market Tears of the Kingdom here in 2023. I don't feel like the marketing campaign has really been fantastic and out of this world. That doesn't mean I want the game any less, but one aspect that people have been talking about is when is the blowout gonna begin and obviously I don't think that's happened yet. Some people disagree and that's fine. What I actually don't wanna talk about though is packs and really any possibility of a public demo event for Tears of the Kingdom. Now we've had public demo events for many Zelda games, most recently Breath of the Wild of course and Link's Awakening. I guess Link's Awakening being more recent than Breath of the Wild because there was a remake but besides that we've had public demo events for many of the Zelda games over the years. Most of these demo events being at things like packs or E3 or even things like they've done best by demo events and stuff. But it does appear that for Tears of the Kingdom we're simply not gonna get a chance to go hands-on with it before release. Now it doesn't mean nobody will. There probably will be a media only, invite only special thing that happens at Nintendo headquarters in Redmond, Washington at some point in April. Although it's weird because you figure by the beginning of the next month they would probably have the game for review purposes. Still the probably will be some sort of preview event that's exclusive for like the Kotakus and IGNs and game spots of the world and stuff like that. Unfortunately I doubt I'm getting an invite but there won't be any public demo and some people are confused because I keep seeing this brought up, oh Nate, Tears of the Kingdom, it's gonna be at packs. I'm tired of correcting this in live streams. So let's correct this right now. Now before we dive deeper into this, I wanna remind you we're on our road to 100,000 subscribers and if we can get there by the time Tears of the Kingdom comes out, we will be giving away a collector's edition of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. So the art book, the pin set, the poster, oh boy. It's really cool. Don't forget about the steel book. That's actually something I'm really excited. I love steel books. Anyways guys, if we get to 100,000 subscribers it could be yours. All right, so look, I'm going to PAX East, right? I booked my trip to PAX East. I would say about a couple of weeks ago at this point and we're going, right? We have our media passes. We have our hotel, the car rental because we're gonna rent a car to get around because it's a little bit cheaper than just taking Ubers everywhere. And yeah, we got our flights and all that, right? We're going to PAX East. Now originally why we planned to go to PAX East when I say we, I mean me and Eric from the Nintendo Prime Podcast, we originally planned to go to PAX East because of the possibility there might be a Tears of the Kingdom demo at PAX East. Now, the reason we thought this was because the floor plans for PAX East showed a massive Nintendo booth. Actually the second largest booth in the entire show. Some people said it was the largest but actually it was the second largest booth on the entire floor. Just said Nintendo. So it's like, man, they're gonna have this really big booth. It's bigger than the Animal Crossing one they did back in 2019. Clearly they're gonna be advertising Tears of the Kingdom. And you know what? On the off chance they decide not to do that. It's probably gonna be Pikmin 4, right? Like they're gonna go with one of those games that they're gonna be in person at PAX. And Nintendo was in person at PAX West last year. So, hey, you know what? Maybe we're about to use this as their pseudo E3 demo for a Zelda game or for Pikmin. Because Nintendo typically has demos at these events. Well, as we get here, we're a couple weeks out from PAX. It happens on the 24th or 23rd to the 26th, I guess. In specific, I actually fly out in eight days, a little over a week. Here's the thing, I have discovered now because the floor plans are updated that Nintendo is no longer at PAX East. At least not at PAX East in the way we thought. They do not have a massive booth. The booth we thought was Nintendo has now been renamed to Nintendo versus Arcade. You can go ahead and look that up if you're interested. Obviously, it deals with a lot of arcade stuff that, yeah, obviously Nintendo is part of that, but it's nothing related to an actual normal standard Nintendo booth. Now, Nintendo is listed technically as a participant in the PAX Arena, but that's really about multiplayer esports. It's an esports arena. So you're Smash Bros of the world. You're Splatoon and tech. Maybe they sneak Mario Kart in for some reason. I don't know, but that's what that's about. It's an esports arena. People can go and participate in esports and watch professional esports teams go at it. So I, look, Nintendo's basically not at PAX East. If we're gonna be frank, people would look at this now and go Nintendo's not there. If this was the map we had a month ago, we probably wouldn't have even booked this trip to PAX. But we did, we're going. Things are already paid for, can't get refunded. We'll find some unique content to make. There will be game demos there of other games from other companies, including Square Enix that we will gladly get our hands on. And on the off chance, Nintendo has a behind scenes media only demo, which wouldn't be on the public floor. We'll let you know because we're gonna be there. And yes, we have media passes for the first time in Nintendo Prime history. So if there is a behind the scenes thing, we will figure it out and participate. At this point, I'm kind of doubting it. Now it's interesting because this has been the primary way that I would say all prior Zelda games were advertised. I think this might be the thing that as a Zelda fan, I feel is missing. The hands on demo event that we typically got at E3, but we also got at some of these other events. We don't have that. We had it for Breath of the Wild even though it didn't come out until early 2017 because it did it at E3 2016. And I know we're never gonna truly get an E3 replacement. If Nintendo's not at E3, you can't expect demos. But it just, to me, feels like a missed opportunity to sell this game to new consumers. That's really all I'm worried about with Tears of the Kingdom when it comes to this marketing. I don't think for people like me, it matters. There are people that are still kind of wishy-washy that did play Breath of the Wild that think it might just be DLC. I don't know if that argument's ever gonna go away. Honestly, one of the worst things Nintendo probably ever said about Tears of the Kingdom was that it started out as DLC because it's gonna be really hard to break that stick. When it won't matter if the game is two or three times larger than Breath of the Wild, it won't matter how much content it's in it. People will always just treat it as glorified DLC. It doesn't look good enough. It takes place in the same Hyrule. And that's probably why people feel like it's just glorified DLC because it takes place in the same Hyrule. Now, I can't make a judgment like that. Obviously, until I play it. Maybe they didn't do enough. Maybe it is really same feeling. Or maybe it's not. I can't know at this point. But a demo could have gone a long way to quouchy not only the fear of it, the DLC stuff and helping those consumers realize, oh wait, no, this is a worthy $70 product because they are charging more for it than Breath of the Wild. Also, they could have done, in my opinion, a better job selling it to new consumers. Now, there are arguments to be made that they are doing a good job. They're chopping up the current trailers, putting them into commercials. And they are advertising the game. I think when I said they didn't feel like their marketing campaign began, some people got confused to mean Nintendo's not marketing at all. No, they are. There's commercials on YouTube. I haven't seen one on TV yet, but maybe it's just not on the channels I watch. But look, they're marketing the game. Every other week, they're releasing a post on Twitter that is pretty much just rehashing screenshots they actually already shared with us. But some people kind of view that as, oh, that's how you get to the casual market or that's how you get to new consumers. I don't think any of these commercials or screenshots are really doing it for new consumers. Let me explain. Nintendo has a 15-second commercial they've been running on YouTube, right? They've been running it to probably millions and millions and millions of views. In the commercial, it shows Ganon doing the voice acting about kill them all. It shows a blood moon happening and enemies popping up. And then Zelda saying, I don't think you could stop them this time. And that's it. That's basically their ad. That ad, if you played Breath of the Wild, if they're trying to attract Breath of the Wild players, just looks like Breath of the Wild. If you're trying to attract new players, what are you talking about? Who are they killing? What is going on? Why should I care? New gamers typically need to be sold on the entire experience. Not just a 15-second clip that doesn't explain anything. That to me is the problem. Breath of the Wild hit on so many new consumers because of the massive marketing campaign behind it. Yeah, obviously you gotta be a great game first and foremost, but the marketing was huge. It was impossible to go anywhere online without seeing the game. And on top of that, you would see a lot of it. The questions you might have would be answered. They're not answered this time. They're not answered for hardcore fans. They're not answered for skeptical fans. And they're not gonna be answered for the general audience either. In my opinion, the best way to advertise to new consumers is to give as much information as possible. And I know a lot of you think that's not the way, but I'm telling you right now, new consumers need as much information as possible, not as little as possible. A 15-second clip is not enough. It's not enough. And I know they have time. Today marks two months until tears of the kingdom comes out. They have time. They probably won't be doing it this month because they're gonna focus on the Mario movie. In fact, we've already seen them focus on the Mario movie and they could do it in April. I get it, but generally to get new consumers, you have to market outside of one month out. One month out is hype building time. You're building the hype for the people that are already planning to buy it. Usually one month out is not how you get a new audience. New audiences require several months of marketing. So they've already missed the window to do that in my opinion. Now we're taking marketing classes and various media courses over the years. And it's true that you can still have effective marketing one month out. It's just when you're trying to capture a new audience, typically you want a longer tail of time to sell things to them. And Nintendo chose not to go that route. I think they're primarily just trying to sell this game to people who bought Breath of the Wild. I think that's a mistake. I think that's a missed opportunity to continue to expand the fan base. I'll give you an example of which or two sold itself to new and old. And because of that outsold, which or one, that's good. That's what you should want to do. But Nintendo isn't for better or for worse, at least isn't doing it well. I could be wrong and the game could go on to sell 40, 50 million. I have no idea. But I think it's a tall task for it to even sell half as much as Breath of the Wild. Call me crazy for saying that. Call me crazy. But even if it sells half as much, that's still a hell of a lot of sale. Oh no, it's only this second best selling to all the game of all time. Except I think they probably put a bigger budget into this. It feels like they might have had a bigger budget for this than the original Breath of the Wild. But we're not gonna know about that until they get to the interview process. And someone asked them about it. And Nintendo is like, oh yeah, we put more money into this than any prior game. Anyways, that's what I have for you today. I hope you guys enjoyed the conversation and you have a good rest of your weekend.