 I'm not gonna lie, this is a bit of an awkward video, but look, where's the direct, right? That's what a lot of people are thinking right now. Where is this Nintendo Direct? Where is the Shadow Drop Nintendo Direct? Where is this partner showcase or a general or a mini? What is going on? We're two weeks into February. Nintendo hasn't given us the goods. So even Nintendo's breaking their own pattern. We have obviously the rumors out there from some trusted insiders. What is happening? What are we doing? Well, I do think that we need to address some of this stuff and also address things I've learned through this process and things I will be changing in the future. But we're gonna get to that. That's gonna be the second half of the video. The first half is gonna actually address well, was there supposed to be a Direct and now it's gone? Well, we have some new information. And again, this is a rumor and you're already gonna see some of the changes in the title and the thumbnail that we're gonna be making in the future just to make sure there is absolutely no confusion. But it's a rumor and it comes from Jeff Grubb. Now, I have reached out to Jeff Grubb privately to just have a small conversation about this rumor. I wanted to see how confident he is and all of this stuff. And based on what he told me about the source, it is a very confident rumor from him. But again, still a rumor. I guess we'll see if it happens next week. Nintendo will probably never confirm this rumor, by the way. But it's neither here nor there. Maybe today's Xbox show at 2 p.m. central time might have been why the Nintendo Direct did not happen today. Let's get into what Jeff Grubb had to say. So over on Twitter, he responded to this guy named Deathbringer who said, what's going on with the Direct? Post phone, canceled, saving for Switch 2 reveal. Here's what he said, I know no one wants to hear this, but this is just like when the Queen died. This is real. I heard earlier this week that they were discussing moving the Direct because of the Xbox business update. I've never known the date for sure. I only ever heard by the middle of February. And then he says, you may now shoot the messenger. So he's taken any bullets that people want to throw his way because of this. I also said this on the last of the Nintendo Dogs on Tuesday, which I went back and listened to. I can confirm he did bring this up on the last of the Nintendo Dogs. But as you know, for some reason, this tidbit didn't do the rounds and get headlines, which it probably should have. And it would make today's video look even better on my end because it would show that, hey, we're hearing something about this before we even got to the 15th. So here we are today, and there is no Nintendo Direct, whether it's a general, a mini, partner showcase. Is it gonna happen this week? Is it gonna happen at all? Are they still gonna announce a Switch 2 in March? That's a lot of stuff that we need to talk about because the two primary sources on this were obviously Necrofilipa Lima from Universal Nintendo, someone we've brought up in the past who said a direct was gonna happen this week on the 15th. And then we had Nate the Hate on his podcast last week who suggested things like it was going to be a partner showcase. And then just in some other places, like FAMI boards and Reset Era and Twitter and stuff like that, essentially said that he had heard it was going to be this week as well. Now, Nate the Hate for the most part has been pretty silent most of this week. So if he had heard any updates on this, he certainly didn't convey it publicly. The only person to convey a potential update on this was Jeff Grubb. And again, for some reason, it just kind of got ignored. And I take some responsibility for that. I know that I should probably be a regular viewer of the last of the Nintendo just in case Jeff Grubb happens to have a little scoop like that, especially around this Nintendo Direct rumor season. So that is the current update. Whether you wanna believe it or not, it's totally fine. If you wanna go ahead down in the comments and give me flak, I totally understand it because one of the biggest things that we're gonna hear today, at least I'm gonna hear, and I've been hearing it already on social media, such as Twitter, is I lied to everyone and I misled people and I knew what I was doing and I intentionally made people think there was a Direct today and I didn't clarify it was rumors and all of this stuff, which I of course did clarify it was rumors. But when you drop a thumbnail like this that literally just says 2, 15, 20, 24, obviously the thumbnail alone is gonna make people start to believe that it is happening on the 15th. There's also something that I need to remember and this is a lesson I probably should have learned before but honestly, this being one of the really, really big times that some insiders got things potentially wrong, one thing I need to realize in doing this sort of coverage is there's also not just whether or not I believe or don't believe a rumor, that's all gonna be personal opinions. Rumors are always meant to be doubted. I've shown and said that several times. I also need to recognize that there is a level of trust between the audience and me. There are some of you guys that really do trust me and if I start to feel like something is going to happen, you're going to also start to think it's going to happen and because of that, there's a little bit of a responsibility on me to make sure that I am very, very clear on what my opinions are and how I feel about something versus what the reality of that something is and unfortunately, even though I've been putting rumor in my titles, rumor has been in brackets at the end of the title so some people didn't see that. Rumor is also like not in the thumbnail so because of that, there's not direct upfront in your face clarity that what we're about to talk about is meant to be doubted and then obviously separating out here's the rumor and then here's my thoughts and I've been trying to do a better job of separating out this is the news and then this is what I think about the news, trying to take some notes from Philip DeFranco and how he approaches it where he gives the news and then gives his opinion but I just want to make sure that I am more transparent about that moving forward. Transparency is something I talked about a lot in my live streams, how I'm a pretty open book, you can ask me anything, I'll address any criticism, whether you like my response or not, I don't know, I'm admittedly a pretty stubborn person but I do want to learn from situations like this and part of that learning is making sure that as transparent as I might be when you chat with me, I want to be transparent through and through. So a couple changes that I already mentioned earlier, we are for any sort of rumor video, we are going to put the word rumor in the thumbnail. All right, so if we're covering a rumor, I'm actually going to separate that rumor out, it's not going to be attached to other news, okay? We're going to do away with that. Rumors are going to be their own videos and they're going to say rumor in the thumbnail and we're going to put rumor at the very beginning of the title, all right? That's just something that I think is just adding further transparency. I also feel like we should put a disclaimer pinned comment or in the description, maybe two, maybe both, where we note what a rumor means, what the term rumor means, because I think a lot of people go, well, do you believe this rumor? I'm like, well, rumors are supposed to have doubt but just because I might think something's true, I'm also a Nintendo fan. So putting a disclaimer in the description putting the disclaimer down in the comments where it identifies this is what rumor means, so everyone's on the same page, then also trying to remind everyone that I am a little biased when it comes to Nintendo stuff and I have a lot of hopeium and because I have a lot of hopeium if it's something I really want to happen, I might start to get really excited about something that may not happen. I personally don't get that disappointed when things don't happen. Like when a Nintendo Direct wasn't announced this week and then didn't get Shadow Drop today and who knows, maybe it's Shadow Drop later today but as far as we know, isn't being Shadow Drop today, I don't actually get upset about it. As much as the hyping irresponsibly I do, I guess you can argue I'm a mix of hyping irresponsibly with a responsible notion in the back of my head. Like I get really excited for a possibility but I have this acceptance underneath it that it might not happen and I'm not gonna be that disappointed. Like a Direct not happening this week isn't some life altering event for me, right? It's really not that big of a deal. Now, besides being more transparent with my titles and my thumbnails, we also need to be better about who we're covering when it comes to rumors. I know that I have a reputation online. I'm not unaware of this fact that people think I will just cover any old rumor no matter where it's from, whether it's 4chan or Zippo or just some random person, Tommy Bear knows, right? And I'm not gonna lie, it's not like it's a reputation I haven't earned in some respects because in the past, even as early as like, even as like latest as like the beginning of February, I did do stuff like that. And I started feeling really bad about it a few weeks ago and then it's really just come full circle now after some realizations today. So I wanna make sure that if I bring you rumors that it comes from a trustworthy place that is easily sourceable and comes from a place that has a track record. Like when I brought up Jeff Grubb today in this particular video, you guys know who Jeff Grubb is. You know, if you don't know, he works at Giant Bomb. He's worked at other outlets. He's been a video game journalist for a long time. He gets some stuff right. He gets some stuff wrong, but he's more right than wrong. A lot of you will just remember the wrongs because it's really easy to remember that we all wanted Twilight Princess and Windbreaker HD and we all wanted Metroid Prime Remastered to come out in 2022 instead of Shadow Drop to the February Direct of 2023. We all know that stuff. Like keeping track of what he did wrong. The wrong stuff always sticks in our mind. Then we forget about all the times he's been right. He's been right about a number of games that are gonna be indirect. He's been right about direct timing. He's been right about things like the Queen, right? He was the one who broke the story that the Nintendo Direct was about to be delayed because the Queen died. That was not just him speculating. He said he had a source on it. And then literally later that day, Nintendo made an announcement that they were delaying the Direct they had just announced because of the death of the Queen. So that is something that I wanna make sure that I'm just focusing more on the reliable places. I'm not gonna stop talking about rumors as much as many of you might want me to but I do need to be more responsible with who we're covering. So I always threw up like the rumor believability scale. You guys have seen this before, one last look at it. I think I'm gonna toss this in the trash because the rumor believability scale really only needs to exist if I'm covering people that aren't very reliable. If you're covering really unreliable people then you need to start clarifying who to believe. In the end, you shouldn't believe any of them. To be clear, I don't care if it's Pioro with his 100% track record on Twitter. I don't care if it's Jeff Grubb. I don't care if it's Nate DeHeat. I don't care if it is, I don't know. Let's say Reggie Fisame, right? If it doesn't come directly from Nintendo should always have some doubt on whether or not it's true. And if you don't have any doubt I need to do a better job of making sure that you have some. I need to provide arguments for both ways. Both why I really want this to be true and might believe it's true but also provide the opposing viewpoint as well. That way it's a more well-rounded situation. So that is something I wanna do in the future as well. Now, a big reason that someone this comes up is I wanna note who we're not gonna be covering anymore, right? I already talked about how we're not gonna be covering Zippo anymore. We don't, Tommy Bear knows was totally fake. We're not, when we don't really cover 4chan unless it's that unique Pokemon situation like last year where a 4chan post went out and then like months later it turned out almost everything was correct. That's obviously an in hindsight cover. But what I wanna tell you about is I made a mistake and we all make mistakes. And I need to own up to this mistake. I did a lot of deep thought on this today and even yesterday just in case this was coming about why I trust the sources that I do. For the most part, it's because they have a track record, right? Nathan Haidt has a track record that we can check and verify that he's gotten a bunch of stuff right. Yes, he's gotten some stuff wrong, but he's gotten a lot of stuff right. Same with Jeff Grubb, same with Andy Robinson, same with Tom Warren, same with the guys at Digital Foundry. There's a lot of people we can go like, they've gotten a lot of stuff right. Have they been wrong sometimes? Yes, but we can actually look at that track record. One thing I have a hard time looking at are track records of people that aren't English speakers. Trusting leakers that are not in a language that I understand. And that is because it is very hard for me to verify their track records because again, they're in a foreign language. I don't really understand it. I'm relying on Google Translate. It's really, really difficult to dig through everything. And I made a mistake in reporting on a guy known as Necrophilipe Lima. And my mistake, I don't think is that I reported. My mistake is that I kept calling him a person who had gotten a number of things correct in the past. And I called him somebody who was trustworthy. I built trust in him from my audience. And to be clear, I don't know him. I don't know him at all. He's probably a really fantastic dude. Universal Nintendo seems like a pretty neat website. But my trust base in him came from my trust base in FAMI boards. And that was a mistake. It was a mistake, not that I covered him, but that I, well, actually it was just all a mistake. Let's just be honest. I don't think he's a bad person. I don't want anyone going to say anything to him. I don't know anything. Maybe he is a super reliable leaker and insider and has a bunch of legit information. I just can't confirm any of it. I can't track his record. I don't, this is a mistake on my end. So I'm no longer going to be covering him. Just like I don't cover Zippo anymore because Zippo has a track record and it's very bad. And I can track that and it looks bad. I want to make sure I'm only covering people that I can actually verify that they are correct most of the time. And that is a change I want to make moving forward. This is going to make rumor videos in the future. I don't want to say more reliable because rumors are meant to be doubted, but they're at least going to make them more fun to talk about because it's going to be a more serious conversation because there's a higher likelihood that the rumor might actually be correct. Again, not believable, but there's a better chance of something Nate that hates us being true than someone who I can't really track anything. And I made this mistake and I deeply apologize to my audience about that mistake. Now, more than this, we need to talk about a couple of the things. One of them is when I get my own sources and I tell you guys, I don't feel like I've made any mistakes in terms of giving you directly what my source is telling me when they give me permission to do so and the trust I build in some of the sources I have and the credibility they have for me behind the scenes. But I do need to be, again, this is one of those things with rumors, careful to make sure I clarify, this is what the actual information is and this is my opinions and thoughts on that information. I am in the past, especially when I've been the source, really kind of merged those two things together and I think it's created a confusing messaging. Now, if you listen to all of my exact words I say in the video, it is spelled out what is speculation and what isn't, but because it's mashed together, it can be hard for just somebody who's casually listening to really discern the difference between what's real information and what is just speculation. And I think that people like Nate the Hake can probably appreciate how hard that is to find that balance when you're talking and giving opinions and doing podcasts and stuff. So again, that is something I wanna clarify better and I'm gonna do it probably with some timestamps in the future being like, this is what the actual news is, this is my thoughts and the timestamp will explain that my thoughts are my own opinions and all that stuff. So that is something I need to do better as well. I don't think this really pertains to this Nintendo Direct situation, but just for other situations coming up, like we'll switch to be revealed in March. Again, our two sources, our two primary sources on that are Nate the Hate and Necro Philippe Lima who now I don't really cover him anymore. And then Nate the Hate, who I do fully trust, but also, hey, we didn't get that direct this week. Then again, he wasn't as confident in this week. So we just take this all with it is. Maybe Switch Shoe isn't being revealed anytime soon. Now you might ask what my opinion is on that. I do still believe Switch Shoe will be announced in March, not just because of my retail pre-order thing that I talked about two weeks ago, but actually just because I think it makes sense. And if there's no direct this month, it actually makes even more sense to me, but what do I know? I don't know anything officially. To be clear, I am not Nintendo. So what did we learn in this video? One, we have an update with a new rumor about a direct, I know, it's gonna feel like goalposts moving. We also learned that I had to take some accountability for the way I've delivered the messages at times. I don't think, I don't really feel like I've lied. It's more of a, I have unintentionally, completely unintentionally, maybe misled people by not clarifying the difference between what the report and what the rumor is versus what my opinions are on that stuff and providing counterpoints. And obviously that I need to be much more careful about who I'm trusting to report on. Again, no hate towards the people that I'm no longer gonna be reporting. There's some of you that after I said I wouldn't report on Zippo anymore that said you still trust Zippo. And that's totally fine. I'm not here to tell you who to believe. I'm just telling you how I'm gonna handle things here moving forward. I need to make sure that I can verify these sources in as best as I can. And the only way I can really verify it since I don't have like Nintendo employees I can reach out to is to simply see if they are correct about a number of things and then decide how many things they need to be correct about for me to be able to cover them. All right, I think that's it. I think we're good. This was a longer video than I planned. Very just talking, not a bunch of editing. I just wanted to be upfront and honest with my community. We'll be back a bit later because we're gonna be live streaming the Xbox Direct today, not Xbox Direct, sorry. The Xbox Podcast, right? Because apparently, according to Jeff, yeah, they might have moved the Direct because of it, which suggests this Xbox Podcast might be a very big deal even for Nintendo because Microsoft is a partner. And then on top of that, we have our Nintendo Prime Podcast tonight where I'm sure some of this will come up again. Thank you guys so much for being here and I'll catch you in the next video.