 So, we have talked multiple times about Tears of the Kingdom and its marketing, and we're not here to really talk about the lack of marketing or is it good or bad or what Nintendo has been doing, but rather, marketing that is still to come. Marketing that we assuredly are getting and when we are going to get it. You see, I think I've figured out Nintendo's plan, and I want to explain this plan to you, and you let me know if I'm crazy down in the comments below, also let me know if you think Nintendo has done a good job marketing Tears of the Kingdom thus far. Now before we dive into that, I am on the road to 100,000 subscribers, we actually just hit 90,000 subscribers, which is so mind blowing and exciting and thrilling. That being said, we are on our road to 100,000, if we get there by the time Tears of the Kingdom comes out, hey you know what, I'll just give away a collector's edition of Tears of the Kingdom because why the hell not, right? Because you guys are making this happen, this is a community celebration, so why not celebrate by giving back? You guys are awesome and amazing, let's get into the rest of this video. So Tears of the Kingdom has obviously had a very different marketing strategy compared to any prior Zelda game. Even Link's Awakening, the remake on Nintendo Switch, got more and better marketing arguably than Tears of the Kingdom. Obviously Breath of the Wild's marketing was out of this world, Skyward Sword HD even got a pretty decent chunk of marketing. But we're at this point now where Nintendo might have changed their marketing strategy a little bit and I say might because a lot of people act like Nintendo's really only doing these short one month marketing bursts for upcoming games and yet they actually marketed for several months Fire Emblem Engaged, they did the same thing for Splatoon 3, they actually did the exact same thing for Xenobite Chronicles 3. I'm not so sure that I buy that Nintendo is just doing these short marketing bursts, often when people talk about this, they're referencing smaller games, they're talking about Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe had a very small marketing window, Bayonetta Origins had a very small marketing window, things like that. But those are also smaller games that were never going to have the sort of marketing budget that say Kirby and the Forgotten Land had just last year. That was a very long marketing cycle, they went about 4-5 months really pushing that game pretty strongly, so it is weird that Tears of the Kingdom being arguably the biggest out of all of those releases is getting this type of marketing. There's a caveat to that though, they didn't seem to market Pokemon Scarlet and Violet as much as maybe they've done prior Pokemon games, I mean they definitely seemingly marketed Pokemon Legends Arceus more, but I will note that Pokemon Scarlet and Violet had a massive leak going on from somewhere on forwards that I think kind of tainted the marketing cycle a little bit. I'm not sure if the Pokemon Company took that leak into consideration, but there wasn't really anything that we're going to show us that we hadn't heard about, so there is that. So my mind's a little skewed with how the marketing went for that game due to that massive game leak out of China. That being said, when we're talking about Tears of the Kingdom, I think it's inarguable to say that the marketing hasn't been the same as prior Zelda games, but I do think I know what Nintendo's doing, and there are two major things that I think we have upcoming that we should be expecting. One of those is the Tears of the Kingdom Special Edition Switch OLED. It's happening folks, I'm not even going to sit here and pretend it's not happening, and here's why. When we got the leak for that OLED earlier this year, it was easy to think it was fan made or maybe just a fake, and it was just a really really good fake job. One of the best fake jobs we've seen, even better when somebody 3D printed an NX system that was later to become a Switch based off a patent. It was a really neat fake job back then, so people thought maybe people are just getting better at faking things, and it's not real. But then Nintendo announced the Collector's Edition, and suddenly symbols that we've never seen before from Nintendo appeared on the Collector's Edition, and those same symbols were also present on the leaked Switch OLED, suggesting it was nearly impossible for that to be a fan mock-up, given that it's using official Tears of the Kingdom symbols made by Nintendo. So yeah, that looked real, and it had retail packaging, and obviously it had all of the bells and whistles. Some of you guys might not like the design or think it's lazy, in particular the family crest me and reused from a prior Special Edition Zelda on the dock, but bottom line is that it looks like that was real, and I know some people speculate it was a prototype and other things. Look, based on my knowledge of manufacturing and working in motherboard manufacturing and a whole bunch of other fields, you don't have retail packaging for prototypes. So to me, that was probably one of the first early mass production runs of the Zelda Special Edition OLED, so I think we're getting it. Quite obviously. Now when you look at the past, the last two they've dropped the Splatoon and the Pokemon ones, they announced those about 9-10 weeks ahead of when they actually released them. Now we're sort of past that window at this point, they technically could announce it I guess today or tomorrow, and it would be almost within that window, just a little outside of it. But it's pretty obvious that even if they announce it next week, the week after, in April, etc., that we are not in that same timeframe. But I think there's a reason that they haven't announced it yet, like they did those. And that is because Nintendo has something else that they're massively promoting at the moment. And while it is true, you can market more than one thing at a time, Nintendo likes to focus their major brux of their marketing on individual events. And unfortunately for Tears of the Kingdom, based on its timing of coming out, there's a certain other, probably more important thing happening for Nintendo, and that is the launch of the Super Mario Bros. movie. Now that comes out April 5th, so we're actually not that far away from having that to go to. Nintendo's been heavily promoting it. We've seen the voice actors appearing on various talk shows and late night talk shows, and tons of commercials, and tons of features, and tweets, and sure, they're reminding us now and then about Tears of the Kingdom, but they're not really sharing new. We're actually finding a lot new about the movie if you're paying attention. Some people aren't paying attention because they don't want to know anything else about the movie, but we are finding out a lot of new details. And that's because they're heavily promoting the Mario movie. So while there might not be any more trailers coming, we did get three dedicated directs for 90-second trailers, like that is, that's insane. So they're heavily promoting the Mario movie, and I think this has impacted their schedule of promotion for Zelda. They want to ensure that launch week into the launch weekend for the Mario movie is absolutely fantastic, the word of mouth gets out there, and everyone's talking Mario movie at the beginning of April. I get it. That's what Nintendo's focusing on, and I think that's why they haven't even dropped things like the Tears of the Kingdom Switch OLED yet. They're waiting until they're clear of that, so that can become the focus of their marketing plans. And this lines up as well with another thing. So to be clear, I think the Zelda Switch OLED's being announced next month after the Mario movie comes out, and I think it's actually still going to release before the game comes out. Nintendo's going to keep that streak alive. I think you're going to see it come out about a week before the game comes out. So if it comes out on May 12th, I think the system's going to release on May 5th. That's just my guess, separating that out, making sure that people that maybe bought the game online, maybe they buy the system in person, or whatever. I think that's how they're going to handle pre-orders for it. That's just my guess. In fact, I wouldn't even be surprised that they decided to release the Amiibo a week early too, but we'll see on that front for now. The Amiibo is scheduled to release the same day. We've also seen that Nintendo might be restocking all Zelda Amiibo very soon here in North America, so there's that to pay attention to as well if you want to get your hands on the third, fourth run of all those Amiibo. But here's the thing, that's not the only major event I think Nintendo has planned. What we have seen with massive Nintendo games in the past is that Nintendo does dedicated events, dedicated directs. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 got one. Well they got one in June, so that was pretty decent before the game came out. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet basically had one. Fire Emblem Engaged basically had one. Almost all of Nintendo's major games get a dedicated direct in some form. So I do think that they are going to get a dedicated direct. Now if you look at the history of these dedicated directs, they typically happen about a month beforehand. And if you think what's a month before Tears of the Kingdom is April 12th, and that happens to be the week after the Mario movie comes out. So my prediction is that we are going to have that Zelda Direct. We are going to get one, and we're going to have a ton of details. A ton of story details. We'll finally get a story trailer. We're going to see some gameplay. There might even be a Treehouse gameplay event attached to it. And I think it's going to happen on April 12th, which lands on a Wednesday. And that is a day that Nintendo has done presentations in the past. The Xenoblade Chronicles, dedicated Nintendo Direct for Xenoblade Chronicles 3 happened on a Wednesday. So this could actually line up quite well to begin their marketing. They just cleared launch week and weekend of the Mario movie. And now they can move on to Zelda promotion. I thought they won't stop, no, I'm not going to stop promoting the Mario movie. But now they can focus on what their next big thing is, and that's Zelda. Now they could announce the Zelda OLED at this event. They also could do what they'd done in the past and just have a random Twitter drop on a Tuesday for a Zelda thing. In fact, maybe they announced the Direct a couple of days early, like on Monday. And on Monday, they also announced the Zelda OLED. You know, that's something to pay attention to, because Nintendo tends to separate out the OLED announcement from the dedicated Directs. I don't know why, that's just what Nintendo does. Maybe just have multiple days of marketing. But yeah, I do think that's the day you guys should have circled on your calendars. It's a month before the game comes out. It's clear of the Mario movie. It's on a Wednesday. And it makes a lot of sense for them to start ramping up marketing then. Because honestly, two weeks after that, review copies go out. A week after that, we get our first preview. Five days after that, we get reviews and then the game is here. So that's really when I think marketing is going to begin. It's pretty much exactly one month out. And then we're going to get all the details that we've been wanting, more story details, more gameplay, a look at the UI. Maybe a look at a brand new area. Maybe an in-depth look at the beginning of the game. There are many things that I think we're going to see. And while it's disappointing, we're not going to have a public demo or even a private demo at PAX East. It's still going to probably be the talk of the show amongst Nintendo fans, that and the Mario movie. Because that's what's coming up. And that's what Nintendo folks are really excited about. So you let me know if I'm way off base on this. I'm very, very certain that these predictions are happening. I hesitate to call them predictions because I actually think that this is more like this is what's happening. And I think I figured it out. But maybe I'm wrong. Either way, they're going to promote the game at some point. So am I right? Am I wrong? You can let me know that as well down below. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. And I'll catch you tonight on our live stream.