It seems over the last couple of months in the gaming industry, one singular trend has been going around that gamers are seriously tired of. That’s the trend of companies “hyping up something” for a specific series or event, only for things to basically fall flat on their face by the end of it. Over the last week alone, multiple companies have done this, and the results have been very disappointing for fans. For example, today is the one-year anniversary of Detective Pikachu Returns on the Nintendo Switch. While not the biggest game on the system or from The Pokemon Company, it was still a nice anniversary to celebrate.
To that end, an official channel over in Japan teased that some “exciting news” would be coming for the Detective Pikachu franchise, and fans were eagerly awaiting what it might be. However, as it would turn out, it was nothing more than a giveaway featuring some plushies, statues, and cards. Just as important, the giveaway was only happening in Japan and would be limited to 100 people. So, yeah, it’s not exactly the most “newsworthy” thing to brag about on an official channel.
Sadly, this is only one company who has done a “swing and a miss” regarding the hyping up of an event. You see, during the Tokyo Game Show, Capcom stated that there would be a “product reveal” featuring Phoenix Wright, and many were hoping that the 7th main entry in the franchise would finally be announced, possibly coming to Switch 2 and other systems in 2025. Instead, it was just a “TV special” featuring the animated versions of Phoenix Wright and Miles Edgeworth merely talking about the entire franchise and another Capcom game for about eight minutes before signing off with no tease of the franchise’s future.
That doesn’t even touch on some of the “bad faith” things that companies like Bandai Namco are doing, where they were charging extra for a DLC stage that should’ve been attached to the DLC character it was being brought in with, which garnered a wave of bad reviews as a result.
Oh, and don’t get us started on all the Nintendo Switch 2 rumors and reports, we really don’t have time to talk about all of that.
The point here is that the gaming industry is in a position where it needs fan support the most, so creating “special events” that don’t really pertain to all the fans or give them what they want needs to stop.
