A picture of an official-looking (ish) document has been making the rounds on social media the last couple of days, purporting to be a juicy look at a bombshell incoming Nintendo Direct. A 4K Nintendo Switch with Nvidia guts. New entrants in the main continuity for five of Nintendo’s most beloved IPs. Third-party releases that go beyond your wildest dreams (But why didn’t they go ahead and throw in a Silent Hill title, huh?). All of this to be announced on January 11! For those counting, that’s four days nigh, and titillating though it may be, a closer look reveals the extraordinarily shaky ground on which this supposed leak stands.
For starters, it seems unlikely that Nintendo would print out an itinerary like this and just leave it lying around for peering eyes. Secondly, odd formatting and a couple of typos (“Softwar,” “Plant’s Vs Zombies,” etc), along announcements for new games in almost all of Nintendo’s best IPs all happening at once just don’t fit Nintendo’s typical calculating, thorough style. Their AAA in-house titles tend to give each other room to breathe, and a schedule that wants to put out a Fire Emblem game one month after a new Legend of Zelda game would all but guarantee a poor showing for the Fire Emblem game, dedicated though the series' die hards may be. And that Zelda subtitle, “Echoes of the Past,” simply doesn’t jibe with their typical naming convention for the venerable series, which tends to be less… generic.
These things can be thrilling at first glance, particularly when we all so badly want Nintendo to give us more than a trickle of their finest games – and sometimes, they do! – but this list checks far too many peoples' boxes. As the old adage goes, if it seems too good to be true, etc, etc.
Oh, and it’s more than a little suspicious that the leaked internal document is in English, right?
