It’s been a day since Microsoft confirmed rumors of a major announcement, by revealing that they would be holding their second ever Xbox Developer Direct next week. That makes it the first major announcement in the industry of the year, and it raises the question of when their competitors PlayStation and Nintendo will be announcing games themselves.
As a reminder, Sony does not have any new first party games announced for this year. Nintendo has three confirmed and now two possible titles to unveil, as well as the highly anticipated announcement of their next generation of console hardware.
Jeff Grubb has once again shared what he knows about Sony’s and Nintendo’s fans in the latest episode of the Giant Bomb podcast. As shared on reddit by user NeonG95, here is what Jeff said:
“It is the one I heard that was coming up the fastest but you can always count on a Nintendo Direct in February. It is almost certainly going to happen in February, again. That leaves the question about a State of Play.
There is a State of Play coming. There’s a State of Play coming. When exactly? Not sure, but I’d expect it in the next few weeks. State of Plays are always weird man. You always get the sense that these are just contractual obligations.
They just told a company that they’d give them free marketing so they fill a need and have to do it. So, they could be disappointing.”
You can watch the clip of Jeff sharing this information here. Jeff seems confident about sharing this information, and that’s possibly because both Nintendo and Sony are not going to be mad about early leaks about plans that will be playing out very soon anyway.
If you needed a reminder, Nintendo has Princess Peach Showtime, as well as remakes of Luigi’s Mansion 2 and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door confirmed for release this year. We are also waiting on two titles that Nintendo promised: Metroid Prime 4, and Intelligent Systems’ long awaited port of Xenoblade Chronicles X.
As the rumor goes, the Xenoblade Chronicles X port may be waiting to come with the new hardware, as the start of a new cycle of Intelligent System games for that console. If this is the case, we hope this version of the game is able to make full use of that new hardware’s capabilities, not just in improving graphics but in eliminating the long load times the title originally had on the Wii U.
A State of Play is an unlikely place for Sony to announce a major first party title that they have simply been keeping under wraps this whole time. Even the Insomniac leaks shared no information of unannounced titles. Some PlayStation fans seem to be anticipating second party titles Rise of the Ronin and Stellar Blade, so maybe we’ll learn more about games like that, or we’ll hear more about their upcoming live service games.
