 You guys know what I love about Nintendo sometimes? They really like the mess of my plans. Okay, that's not really fair. I had a video recorded for yesterday where I was talking about the weirdness of Nintendo this summer and to be honest, this news today doesn't really change that. However, I'm really glad I didn't release that video because there was a small segment in there where I talked a little bit about Splatoon 3 that I'm gonna have to cut out now before I release it, which, or at least, maybe not cut out, but change. Because today Nintendo did announce a brand new Nintendo Direct. I'm not gonna sit here and make you wait five minutes for the news. Here it is. On August 10th at 6 a.m. Pacific, so 8 a.m. Central time for me, there will be a Splatoon 3 Direct presentation and the tweet says, Join us in the Splatlands for roughly 30 minutes of updates, which is a massive Direct. That's actually longer than the 20 minutes they did for Xenobite Chronicles 3. That's 100 plus hours worth of content, so this is clearly gonna be the Direct that's supposed to prove to us what Splatoon 3 is, why we needed it, because there's a lot of people out there saying Splatoon 3 should have just been DLC, Splatoon 3 should have just been, well, I don't know, a free update maybe? I don't know, whatever you want to call it. There's a lot of people that aren't sold that we needed Splatoon 3. Now, I'm not one of those people, and I was gonna say this in my video yesterday. You'll see this video. At some point, probably later today or this week, but I'm of mine that Splatoon 3 is what we need. See, Splatoon 3 to me has a number of upgrades already. As an example, visually speaking, there is a massive increase in quality to me. I understand for most they're not gonna see that. That's because Splatoon has such an amazing art direction where that art direction can mask that there's actually some issues with the visuals at times in Splatoon 2 and even Splatoon 1, and Splatoon 3 doesn't seemingly have these issues from what we've seen so far. Hence the big upgrade. But you know what? We're not gonna dive too deep into that because in the end, you noticing these differences or not is gonna be highly subjective. It's sort of like debating frame rates between 30 and 60, 60 is objectively better. But whether or not you care about 30 or 60 is a subjective preference that some people can't even tell a difference. We're all different. So what we've been waiting for is obviously the gameplay mechanics, the modes, the items and weapons and abilities. Now we've already seen new abilities added to the game, but for some reason we forget about that when talking about it because since those abilities were unveiled, we pretty much have just been seeing the old abilities and the old items featured again because they're clearly going to include all of the old weapons or at least a majority of the old weapons and abilities in the game, basically all the old content in terms of weapons and abilities to be there. We don't know about maps and all that. It would be kind of weird if some of those maps are here because this takes place in an entirely new area called the Splatlands. So I would presume we're gonna have completely brand new maps, but what do I know? What I will say is after this direct, we will know everything we need to know. What I find interesting here is Nintendo gave us a two-day warning. This is not like them. That in particular I find to be fascinating. We usually get about a 24 hour warning, sometimes a little bit less. This time they're giving us two days. Why are they giving us two days when they don't do that before? Well, I mean, Pokemon gave us two days as well. Let's give the Pokemon companies some credit with their Pokemon presents. But Nintendo didn't do that. They didn't give us two days with the third party direct. They didn't give us two days with the Xenobite Chronicles direct. But here they are giving us two days with the Splatoon 3 direct. I think this is because they want everybody to show up to this direct presentation because it's 30 minutes, it's a blowout, and they're about to prove to us what this game is and potentially sell millions and millions and millions of more copies at launch. Now, I mean, I don't know that they're gonna sell millions and millions at launch. I have no idea. Maybe they will. I mean, gotta remember, Splatoon 2 sold over 15 million. So it is possible that conceivable this game could sell 3, 4, 5 million at launch. I have no idea. It's gonna be interesting to see a Splatoon 3 long haul that can match Splatoon 2 sales or exceed it because obviously, Splatoon 2 had a lot longer on the market to get those evergreen sales going. Splatoon 3 with the current Switch, I'm not so sure that it's gonna be able to have the exact same long tail. I know we don't know how much longer Switch still has. We don't know if Nintendo's gonna extend the generation with a hardware refresh rather than a hardware replace. Or we don't know if it's gonna be a cross-gen title because Splatoon 3, in theory, could also be a cross-generation title in the similar vein that we saw with, I don't know, Mario Kart 8 except I do think Splatoon 4 would eventually release on the other platform because hey, we got Splatoon 2 and 3 in the same generation. So obviously, we would get Splatoon 4 on the next generation but maybe they poured over a little DLSS magic for Splatoon 3 to make it a cross-generation title. I don't know. I mean, at this point, any game coming out at this point in the Switch's lifecycle, I sort of assume Nintendo has some sort of plan to have it there day one on the next platform and not just with backwards compatibility, which I really hope is there, but with some console-specific upgrades. At least that's what I'm hoping because that's just gonna extend the longevity of these games that aren't gonna be on the market otherwise long enough it might be viewed as a disappointment in sales just because they didn't have as long on the market to attain those sales. And remember, Splatoon 2's have like five years on the market to get the sales that it does. Splatoon 3, you know, might have one or two. So yeah, we need to obviously future-proof that. Nintendo, I think, knows what they're doing. Assuming Nintendo ever knows what they're doing is usually a big risk. But I'm excited for this direct. This is a direct, I'm probably more excited for than Xenoblade Chronicles 3 because I just, I like Splatoon more than I like Xenoblade Chronicles 3. But I'm assuming it's just more my kind of game these days. I used to be really into these big multiplayer games in the past and I'm really curious if they're able to do some new unique things with this. Can we get local multiplayer in multiplayer? Wouldn't that be something? If I could have Eric on stream join me on my switch in split screen and do online multiplayer together. I think that would be rather interesting even though obviously people not playing in split screen would have an advantage. I think this is an interesting time for Nintendo because Splatoon 3 is literally their big seller. I know we have Pokemon coming but that's made by Game Freak and the Pokemon Company. Things that Nintendo does not have 100% control over. Nintendo owns the studio that made Splatoon 3. Nintendo does not have any other game coming out this year that they created and published that's going to sell better than Splatoon 3. This is their big seller of the second half of 2022. So I'm really curious how well this is going to do. Now they have other big sellers coming, Mario plus Travis Parks of Hope. That's their big seller from my third party company. Obviously second party-wise and IP ownership-wise you can kind of look at the Pokemon games as obviously a big seller coming from that space and this is Nintendo's first party big seller. I don't think they're gonna have anything else surprise announced that's gonna sell better than this. Even if they somehow surprise announced a Zelda port or something, I don't think that's gonna touch the sales of Splatoon 3. I think Splatoon 3 is on a whole different level and Splatoon's almost always been on a whole different level than Zelda from the original game back on Wii U. If you can imagine this game, this franchise being bigger than Zelda almost from day one, it's insane. Now you can argue, I mean Breath of the Wild is a 25 million, I get it, I get it. But we'll see, hopefully Breath of the Wild 2 can repeat but for now, let's focus to Splatoon 3. This is the big first party IP. I think it's gonna carry us until Breath of the Wild 2 if you're just looking at first party. So I'm excited. I hope you're excited as well. I will see you guys bright and early at 8 a.m. Well, probably we will go probably an hour full early because why not? Splatoon 3 deserves it. And my dog is whining in the background. He needs a little loving. So I better get going and get this video out and go spend some time with my dog. You guys are amazing. You guys are awesome. I am Nathan, you're over the chance from the Nintendo Prime. And by the way, the code, if you're looking for it and waiting for it for today, yeah, it's not in this video. Sorry, sorry, it's gonna be in the next one. I have multiple videos coming this day. So if you're looking for the code for that giveaway, just stay tuned. Catch you guys in the next one.