Midori did something quite surprising for someone with her social standing in the video game community – she just leaked out a Nintendo game.
A few hours ago, she shared this tweet:
“A game is in development at Nintendo with the codename Banquet.”
It’s pretty surprising stuff, since Midori was actually considering ending her Twitter account, and thereby ending the steady stream of early insider information about Japanese video games, particularly for Atlus and Sega projects.
Truthfully, of course, the codename is not that much information at all. But, if this information is correct, other insiders, and games press who have their own sources, would have recognized that this leak is legit. And, of course, Midori knew that they would see that, too.
There is a lot that goes into the decision to leak information like this, but it’s more about choosing not to leak than to leak what they find out. For most journalists, the primary concern is something between protecting the source, and making sure that the information is legit. They don’t necessarily leak information out the moment they confirm it’s legit. If it compromises the source, it won’t allow them to tap the source in the future, so they may choose to act in their source’s best interest.
There are also situations where there’s no one necessarily stopping a potential leaker who got the information, but they may have different reasons not to leak. For example, if advance word that Blizzard was working on a new StarCraft came out, for example, it could jeopardize the project. If expectations go unchecked on games that are still in progress, that could harm said project, and even lead them to getting cancelled.
While sometimes a leak can help a game, in general, the game company wants to have control over when a game is revealed, so that they can predict how well a game will be advertised, and subsequently, how much money it can make. Grand Theft Auto 6 itself was compromised over an early reveal, and while news outlets like us where happy to get the early word out, a properly planned reveal could have been better press for Rockstar, which could have also meant better metrics for the news outlets too.
We cannot underestimate how sabotaging an early reveal can be to a game. So for Midori to decide to go forward with this, and possibly sharing even more information in the future, means that she’s confident revealing this game won’t hurt the project, and it’s something fans will want to know about this early.
But we don’t know a whole lot about it for now. Is this a Switch 2 title? Is it a sequel to Kirby’s Dream Buffet? Or does the codename have nothing to do with the game at all? We will just have to wait for when more is revealed.
