Examples of Damage Control in Gaming: Nintendo Indirect

It was understandable for Nintendo to indefinitely postpone their next Nintendo Direct, previously planned to air on Thursday afternoon for United States time zones. It happened after Hokkaido was hit with a major earthquake earlier in the day, which claimed the lives of at least 30 citizens. This was the latest incident in what’s been a particularly rough summer for Japan, which followed heat waves with record-setting temperatures and the biggest typhoon of the year mere days before this. The entire country deserves a break, and hopefully they receive that despite summer having two weeks to go.

It will take time for Nintendo to prepare a replacement Direct, since they might need some new announcements after some leaks and other mishaps. There wasn’t much time for Nintendo and other publishers to prevent some announcements and updates from going live online shortly after the planned Direct, for games clearly intended to be revealed on it. I feel a little bad for those involved, but the drip of leaks has been interesting to watch.

The new Yoshi platforming game developed by Good-Feel for Switch was conspicuous in its absence on a Direct earlier this year and especially at E3 2018. It was announced at E3 2017 as a follow-up to Yoshi’s Woolly World, and appeared finished enough to be ready for a 2018 release at the time. Nintendo confirmed at E3 that the game was delayed until sometime in 2019. It was likely set to appear on this Direct, since the name Yoshi’s Crafted World went live on Nintendo of America’s website for a short time on Thursday.

This leak isn’t too bad, since the name slipping through the cracks is better than, say, a whole trailer making its way out. It will be nice to see how the game has improved, since there were remarks about how it needed polishing at E3 2017.

There was a title whose leak was worse, though. Civilization VI was announced for Switch yesterday morning, with a press release full of info being sent to the press, and the listing going live on 2K Games’ official website. Strategy games could have had a good home on Wii U, thanks to the control options offered with the Gamepad. But publishers never capitalized on it, partly due to its hardware sales being so lackluster that not even Nintendo’s excellent first-party offerings could resuscitate it. Publishers aren’t making that mistake again on Switch, especially those that handle smaller and mid-level games, and this game will join the list. It’s due for a release on November 16.

Any question about whether this was planned to be announced on the Direct was answered when the press noticed that the trailer linked to on the website was inactive. It was further confirmed when the announcement was later taken down. It’s unfortunately too late for them now, since the info is on every major gaming website. There’s a chance they promised Nintendo that they’d reveal it on the Direct, so we might have to wait a short while for the officially official word.

It’s possible Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition HD was planned to be announced on the Direct. As the name implies, it’s a port of the mobile Pocket Edition for HD console platforms (even though mobile platforms output HD resolutions), which includes Final Fantasy XV’s main story with some creepy chibi-looking characters whose mouths don’t move. There’s an argument for this port being a nice novelty, but the combination of its existence and the $29.99 price makes this a weird idea — even if it’s $17.99 for the first week. Note that the Royal Edition of the main game (which includes the original FFXV game and the first round of DLC) was recently on sale for $19.99.

This will be the only way to play FFXV on Switch, however. I can’t imagine how virulent the reaction would have been from people who were still hoping for a port of the actual FFXV if this was revealed on the Direct, especially if it wasn’t made immediately clear that it was coming to all platforms. There’s no hope for an FFXV Switch port given the performance issues it already has on the base PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, but a Pocket Edition port could have seemed like a middle finger at first. This is available on PS4 and XB1 now, and will come to Switch in a short time.

Nintendo likely would have discussed the Nintendo Switch Online system, which is set to debut later this month. It would have been surprising if they didn’t, but it’s why several games were suddenly listed to not support the cloud saving feature on Nintendo.com. This includes the Pokémon Let’s Go games, Splatoon 2, the upcoming port of Dark Souls Remastered, and several others.

When asked, Nintendo confirmed the listings are accurate, and mentioned that these games won’t support cloud saves to combat piracy. Sure, that might be the case, but it’s never a good look when efforts from companies to fight piracy inconvenience legitimate owners. It’s bad news for anyone who’s been looking to secure their saves, something hackers have already been able to do, to no surprise.

There’s no indication as to what date Nintendo will reschedule their Direct for, but they might plan to air it before Tokyo Game Show properly begins on the 19th. Don’t be surprised if it airs next week, and for their sake, hopefully nothing else slips through the cracks before then. Even more importantly: Hopefully Japan doesn’t get hit by any further disasters.