January / February Update
Hello you wonderful Patreon People!
I hope all of you great people are greatly doing great, that all your new year resolutions are coming along as planned and that a fairy blesses you with infinite riches and unimaginable fortunes!
The video analysing historic trends of the Mario series is out and I’m quite happy with how it turned out!
However - as some of you, especially observant people, probably already realised - this video is not the video about the Outer Wilds DLC that I teased last time.
Oh no!
What happened?
Well … actually, nothing major, really!
I was happily working on the Outer Wilds video and happened to finish the script when all of a sudden.
Oh no!
The Nintendo Switch 2 reveal dropped!
So, it’s always great if I get a chance to put down a script after finishing it, and then go back to it after getting a bit of distance.
Since the switch 2 reveal just happened around the same time I finished the script I thought it might be a fun idea to spend a week on a quick 20 minutes long side project about the history of the Mario series and then to return back to the Outer Wild’s video with fresh eyes.
And thus, a single week turned into two, 20 minutes turned into almost 40 - and here we are!
So the Echoes of the Eye video is coming along nicely and it will be the next one - the script is already almost finished, which means it should be ready in roughly three weeks if nothing major goes wrong.
I’ve also done a bit of background work on a couple of other upcoming videos, so I’m actually pretty confident that the video release schedule will be a bit faster over the next couple of months! (Though take this with a grain of salt, because for whatever reason, everything I touch seems to magically double in scope recently.)
So did anything of interest happen while I was hibernating?
Well, the switch 2 got revealed didn’t it?
And what a reveal it was!
It looks like a switch … but bigger!
Bigger display!
Bigger joycons!
Bigger buttons!
Bigger back stand!
A completely new product!
A big-switch!
So I’m obviously joking, but I’m also not.
They didn’t show us much more than a switch but bigger, did they?
To me it seems as if they aren’t quite ready yet to start the global marketing campaign and were mainly just reacting to the leaks.
They told us almost nothing new, but the very little information that we got actually looked quite good to me!
The most interesting news is probably that the joycons can be used like a pc-mouse.
Mouse controls open up tons of interesting use cases for Nintendo games - from Mario Party mini games, to Mario Maker UI overhauls, up to completely new Nintendo franchises (Mushroom Kingdom Real-Time-Strategy Game anyone?).
I’m really glad that the Switch 2 joy-cons will be Hall-effect based, meaning that joy-con drift is finally a thing of the past.
(May all my drifting joycons burn eternally in controller-hell.)
The magnetic joy-con connections look really interesting, though I wonder how strong they’ll attach to the console. Nintendo often used shaking based motion controls in their Switch 1 games - if the joycons aren’t attached to the console really firmly then I’m a bit worried that I end up sending my Switch 2 flying as soon as I start to roll around in Mario Odyssey.
What else did they show?
The new back-stand seems to be a real improvement!
The new dock design is a lot less rectangular!
The new Mario-Kart looks really Mario-Kartish!
We really didn’t get a lot of information, did we?
Though it’s nice of Nintendo to do a direct every once in a while so that we, at least, can test the quality of our leaks!
It’s really hard for me to come to a definitive conclusion where on the hype scale the Switch 2 ends up landing, as long as we don’t know with certainty what tech will be inside the console and what games they’ve been working on.
But given the little information we currently have, I’m already pretty certain that the Switch 2 is going to be a success.
Nintendo is in a really good position moving into this console generation, as long as they don’t make any major mistakes this should be an easy generation for them!
All they really need to do is to give us a better Switch and to continue to release games of the quality they are currently at, and everything should be on rails - which seems to be exactly what they are doing.
We’ll probably take a closer look at the whole thing and especially the games they have worked on once they actually reveal anything we didn’t already know.
For now my final preview assessment is: Cautiously hyped.
Hooray!
I’ll see all of you in a couple of weeks for the Outer Wilds video - we’ll talk a lot about death and decay in it, so there’s something to look forward to!
Finally - as always, a huge and gigantic thank you to all you wonderful, wonderful people!
Your support is truly making a difference - a huge thank you for this!
Comments (13)
As others online have said, it seems unlikely Nintendo would do a reveal just to quiet rumors, especially since this trailer would increase rumors. Rather, some people online have suggested that this trailer is really intended to make a super basic announcement, so that Nintendo and other game companies can start to announce new games for the Switch 2. Given that this article (https://www.nintendolife.com/guides/nintendo-switch-2-all-confirmed-games-and-release-dates) has a list of games announced for the new console, it seems likely this might be the reason, although Nintendo is also likely trying to modulate our excitement before the direct.
Okay so I just watched the quantitative analysis. This is probably your most absurd video ever. Amazing. Thanks again ^^ (And yes, I am counting the april fools video about making whales in SMM in that absurdity assessment.)
Personally, I don't think the Switch 2 reveal in January was a reaction to the leaks, because if that were the case, I feel they would've already shown it in, like, September or October last year. Especially considering the reveal trailer hardly even... "revealed" anything (we basically still know most of the things we know from leaks), I'm convinced this has just always been their plan and they're sticking to it, no matter what. Regardless, that April Direct is gonna be a very exciting one!
It has been suggested that this "reveal" was actually intended to allow game devs to announce games that would be coming to the switch 2, which is why it's mostly just saying Switch 2 exists.
Mushroom Kingdom RTS? No. Hyrule RTS game? That's what I'm talking.
Ceave, we need to talk. I can't get out of my mind the 2/7 Yoshi, thinking about that made me giggle even hours after watching the video. Oh man, the 2025 starting very strong e promising.
If they announce Mario Maker 3, there is a good chance Mario Maker 2 will have been shorter-lived than Levelhead, which is strange to think about. LH is approaching its 5th anniversary, any chance you might check what the community's built in that time?
A video about content creation games that aren't MM has been something I wanted to do for ages but never got around to yet!
You mentioned a Mushroom Kingdom RTS, but isn't that what the Mario and Rabbids game was?
I'm pretty sure that Mario and Rabbids was turn-based, not real-time
I don't think the new joycons will fall out easily. You can see small holes at the bottom of the "rail" which are probably for some clips. Also what would the release buttons be for if they would be just held magnetically.
When you're working on a personal project but suddenly get a lot of inspiration to do something else... you can't pass up motivation like that to get stuff done!
I hope that many of the new games will still be playable on the old Switch. I doubt it, but there is more hope than with the DS and 3ds. The technological differences won't be as great as there were back than I think. Danke für das tolle neue Video.