 It's been nearly the gestation of a human baby since the last proper Nintendo Direct. In September of 2019, Nintendo announced Xenoblade Chronicles Remastered, Terry Bogard in Smash, and showed off Luigi's Mansion 3 and Animal Crossing New Horizons all in a single presentation. In the months that have followed, we've had several smaller reveals, a Direct Mini which highlighted a few new games, plus a few Smash Directs and Pokémon Directs. The reveal trailer for Paper Mario the Origami King was shadow-dropped as a complete surprise just two months before its release. We didn't even get a full Nintendo Direct to coincide with E3 Week. Not that E3 happened anyway. It would be easy to blame the lack of a Nintendo Direct on current challenges around working from home. This is certainly a factor, but there's more at play here. In investor meetings, Nintendo's president, Shuntaro Furukawa, has made it clear that the company is shifting its marketing focus away from its core audience to instead appeal to a more casual crowd. First off, very quickly, yes, remote working has made marketing difficult for Nintendo. According to President Furukawa, there have been cases where the marketing of products did not move forward as we had planned, so we are taking a flexible approach in thinking about what we can do under these circumstances. In spite of this, and in spite of Nintendo's forecast that sales will drop this year due to manufacturing shortages, the company is actually increasing its advertising budget by 9 billion yen, or around 80 million US dollars. The company is definitely not shying away from marketing opportunities. When asked about this by an investor, the company's president said, Now that Nintendo Switch has entered the middle of its life cycle, it is important to pursue activities that also create better awareness of our products for people who do not normally play games. We believe that we will potentially reach a situation in which we need to spend more for advertising now than we did when the hardware was first launched. The same point was made in an investor meeting in March 2019, when the company promised to create a, quote, broader awareness of a variety of different entertainment experiences, made possible by the Switch to, people who have never before been interested in video games. According to Nintendo, the Switch is the victim of its own success. The console has proven phenomenally popular with die-hard Nintendo fans, and with the gaming community as a whole. At the midpoint of its lifespan, there's a danger that Switch sales will plateau because every gamer who might buy one already owns one. So Nintendo is sinking more money into advertising its games and hardware to people who might not have played many games before. Nintendo has never spent quite as much as Sony or Microsoft on advertising. They haven't needed to, considering their dedicated fan base, and what money they do spend on adverts is allocated very shrewdly. Nintendo will often spend more money on advertising during summer months when other games companies aren't releasing new products. Now though, Nintendo is pushing a new advertising plan, which essentially boils down to chucking money at splashing their games everywhere in order to appeal to a wider, mainstream audience. We've felt a bit of this ourselves. Companies bid different amounts of money to get their adverts shown before YouTube videos. Our video on Paper Mario the Origami King earned £4.25 per thousand views, compared with a channel average of just £2.66 the previous day. Nintendo spent a lot of money to get the Origami King trailer in front of as many YouTube viewers as possible. And you know what? This strategy worked. The Origami King reveal trailer has accrued nearly five million views in a month and a half, while September's Nintendo Direct has received just 2.5 million views in nine months. The long-form presentation model of marketing might not actually be the best way to get attention, especially if Nintendo is aiming for a wider demographic with its marketing at the moment. This is not to say that Nintendo Directs have no purpose or that they'll never come back. It's worth noting that Nintendo is hesitant about making too many release promises at a time when game releases might be disrupted by ongoing current events. For now, though, the company is trying to broaden its appeal, and that clearly means putting aside the traditional Nintendo Direct presentations in favour of timely game or franchise-specific reveals. In the Q&A, President Furukawa did have one other interesting thing to say on Nintendo's future. He said, It would be presumptuous for me to talk about the entire entertainment industry. But people around the world are in the difficult position of having no choice but to stay at home right now. We often describe Nintendo as an entertainment company that brings smiles to people all over the world. And, under this situation, we think every day about what we can do that is unique to Nintendo. It sounds like, no matter what new marketing strategies Nintendo will use over the coming months, the company will try not to lose sight of its core goal of making people happy. Perhaps the moral of the story is, don't be afraid to try new things, but don't lose sight of the things that make you unique.