Insider Shares Some Bad News For Nintendo Fans

12.04.2024 - 20:09 / gamerant.com / Nintendo Direct / Dominik Bo / Nintendo

The rumored April 2024 Nintendo Direct may not be happening after all. This news, which is likely to disappoint some Nintendo fans, comes from the same insider who originally reported on the possibility of Nintendo doing an early spring game showcase.

The source in question is journalist Pedro Henrique Lutti Lippe, also known by his online moniker «Brazil.» Back in mid-February, Lippe had a major scoop that Nintendo internally delayed the Switch 2 until 2025. The claim was subsequently independently corroborated by several media outlets.

Shortly thereafter, Lippe reported that he heard some talk of another Nintendo Direct being planned for April 2024. He characterized the purported broadcast as a general-purpose one, geared toward showcasing Nintendo's first-party games. But in a recent follow-up posted on Famiboards, Lippe said he no longer believes an April 2024 Nintendo Direct is happening. He came upon that conclusion after most of his sources stopped hearing «rumblings» about an early spring showcase almost as soon as he first reported on them, prompting him to suspect that his info was outdated from the beginning.

Reflecting on this development, Lippe conceded that he likely should have refrained from sharing any info before verifying it with multiple sources, but that he simply got caught up in all the buzz generated by his Switch 2 delay scoop. Moving forward, the reporter suspects that the next Nintendo Direct will instead happen in late May or early June 2024. He previously mentioned that the mid-2024 broadcast may be the one that Nintendo uses to officially reveal its next console. However, that speculation was paired with this newly retracted rumor of an April Direct. What's more, there's recently been no shortage of Switch 2 announcement rumors that ended up being wrong.

While Lippe's latest update is bound to disappoint some fans who were looking forward to an early spring Nintendo showcase, this turn of events is not exactly surprising. Namely, an April Nintendo Direct was always a bold prediction, as the Japanese company has been fairly consistent in skipping that month for years; Nintendo's last April Direct happened in 2017, when the gaming giant was eager to reassure fans that its then-newly launched console would get a much beefier game lineup later that year.

Not only is there no such urgency this time around, some industry watchers are actually characterizing the company's current priorities as being the exact opposite of its spring 2017 ambitions. Specifically, the widely reported Switch 2 delay is expected to result in a fairly uneventful year for Nintendo, partially because the Japanese group may hold back on its upcoming AAA releases in order to bolster its next console's