Yesterday, we reported on Pathea Games announcing My Time At Evershine, the latest title in the My Time At Portia series. There was just one problem with that announcement.
Pathea launched a Kickstarter for the game, promising that if they reach a funding goal they would also make it for the Switch 2, AKA, Nintendo’s next console that they will officially reveal between now and March 31, 2025.
Of course, the whole problem with that is that Nintendo hasn’t actually made the announcement yet. Now, Pathea has established a good track record, that it would be reasonable to believe that they can make good on this promise. But a former Nintendo employee has stepped up to explain what Pathea may not have realized they did.
Kit Ellis worked on marketing for Nintendo, and is most famous for being co-host of Nintendo Minute alongside Krysta Yang. Today, Kit and Krysta are content creators, and consult independent game studios just like Pathea Games.
Kit quoted a news report on this on Twitter, and shared this commentary:
“This is a high risk, high reward strategy. This news is getting a lot of attention, but I can’t imagine Nintendo is happy with their approach. There’s a reason no other Switch 2 games have been announced up to this point.”
We can see Kit and Krysta discussing this further in their podcast, but we don’t have to wait for that to understand why he said this. Of course, Nintendo would want to have control over the marketing of the Switch 2.
While fans can get frustrated when game companies don’t confirm their games and products the moment the information leaks or rumors come out, it’s actually what’s best for those products.
Companies invest in marketing plans so that they can get the most attention and interest for their products. This is true for all kinds of consumer businesses, not just video games. The hope is with properly executed marketing plans, they can get the most sales for those products.
On Pathea Games’ end, they may have limited options and felt that they had to do this. After all, they are still crowdfunding their games, revealing that they don’t make enough money from the games themselves to bankroll their sequels.
But we can imagine Kit’s frustration, because if he had consulted for them, he may have discouraged them from trying this. Or at least, he would have known why Pathea made this decision that he would not have made.
With all that said, we don’t know what Pathea’s line of thinking is. It is absolutely possible that they did talk to Nintendo about this. If Nintendo did not necessarily give their approval, they would at least have gotten a heads up. Pathea will probably talk about this to clear the air in the near future, so we have that to look forward to. As well as some other things that Nintendo could say themselves..
