What would Nintendo's actual major holiday release have been, if Covid-19 hadn't caused its delay?

I think 3D world would’ve been this year 😤 I wanna play that so bad

@liquiddragon: Did I imagine that the 3D World port had a December release date originally? I swear that was coming out this year. I should've put it on the poll.

@bisonhero: they should’ve pushed Pikmin to next year and put more resources towards 3D World to get it out this year. Pikmin I feel is gonna get killed. 3D World would’ve done fine.

@liquiddragon: Perhaps the argument is that 3D World will sell well wherever they put it, but Pikmin 3 probably needs the marketing push/"it's the only game to buy in the fall" of being Nintendo's fall release.

As someone who played Pikmin 3 already, I'm not going to rebuy it, but it's very good. People should play it.

I know this is not helpful but the title made me think of what they had and what they are into doing these days and now all I can think of now is Pikmin 99(Which I totally invented and deserve 50% of all things for).

Even though I'd never play it(I want more single player Olimarian adventures).

@petesix0: Yeah, I quite like Pikmin, but after its pretty middling debut on the Gamecube (the Gamecube didn't sell great, and I don't think Pikmin 1 or 2 sold super amazing), and then middling performance on the Wii U (the Wii U didn't sell great, and I don't think Pikmin 3 sold super amazing), the series seems kinda cursed. All 3 games are solid, though Pikmin 2 is kinda weak (it's long but kinda repetitive and grindy).

Hopefully a zillion people buy Pikmin 3 on the Switch and see the appeal of the series, because otherwise I think Nintendo is going to quietly shelve everything to do with Pikmin.

I disagree with the entire premise of the thread. Nintendo often has no major holiday release. This has not yet happened on Switch, but was a regular occurrence on their past three systems at least. Unless they have something unannounced I doubt very much that anything was delayed. Metroid Prime 4 was just gutted and restarted this year. It has at least 2-3 more years of development to go. The first Breath of the Wild took the entire lifespan of the Wii U to build. Even if they doubled development speed they wouldn’t realistically be ready until next year, but my guess for both games is 2022.

@raven10: It's been somewhat of an "open secret" that Nintendo has been hit disproportionately hard by COVID. You're right that they don't always have something out, but they've had a lot of things announced for some time now and it's not irrational to assume they might've been affected by the situation. That said, by "open secret" I mean a thing liars say in forums and on podcasts, for which they have no actual reliable reference.

Assuming anything got secretly delayed, I guess the Zelda game. It looked like it was in the same engine as Breath of the Wild, and they showed a real trailer for it, not just a logo.

That Mario pack sure does feel slapped together, like they had the idea, started it, and then they REALLY needed it out.

Pikmin remaster followed by a Zelda 2 seemed like what they were ramping up to. Metroid is still in its weird development hell and I figured a sequel to BOTW would be "easier" to put out.

I love Pikmin(1&2, limted 3 experiences so far), but I am absolutely of the mind Nintendo sees this as "nice to throw a reference to", but nothing more. RTS can be a hard sell. Especially when aesthetics are a hard counter to the kind of scene most RTS go for. This is my "Why doesn't Nintendo Metroid more" and I needed to represent.

@raven10: Nintendo announced that Retro was restarting Metroid Prime 4 back in January 2019, not this year. Nonetheless, I agree that 20-22 months is a really short dev cycle for Retro to make a Metroid, so there was honestly no chance of it coming out this year, but I put it on the poll in case some real nutcases actually thought that was ever going to be a 2020 game.

Zelda BotW 2, though, was vaguely possible for this year. BotW 2 really seems like it is going to be a Majora's Mask situation. To get it out on the same console cycle, you have to assume that A) it will reuse a lot of tech and art assets because they already have a winning formula from the first game that people like, and B) some sort of planning work on BotW 2 must've started within literally a few weeks of the Switch launch, because the player and critical reception of BotW was extraordinarily, universally high. Mid-2017 to mid-2020 is 3 full years of development time on the game (it seems like a completely different team worked on the Link's Awakening remake). It's possible that they could've had BotW 2 out for this fall with 3 years of dev time. But sure, 2021 or 2022 is the safer bet.

For what it's worth, I voted for New Pokemon Snap. They announced that game in June and then weirdly never showed any other footage of it, and it seemed like the kind of "make some easy Pokemon revenue" project that would've come out later in 2020 but probably got derailed. I think it's pretty likely that New Pokemon Snap would've been an "announced at E3, out fall of this year" sort of game, but instead it quietly slipped into 2021. Animal Crossing was obviously done by the time Covid impacted things, and I assume Paper Mario was also 99% done and just going through like Nintendo cert when Covid started.

I think it is 3D Allstars and Hyrule Warriors as well. Maybe Pokemon snap but even from the trailer in June it looked very early to me.

I know it's not Nintendo but I think Monster Hunter Rise & No More Heroes 3 would have come out this year had it not been for Covid. I'm not convinced we'll see BotW 2 or Metroid Prime 4 next year but would love to see it. I'm also not sure what the situation is with Bayonetta 3, I feel like that should have come out by now regardless of Covid.

I think it was always Hyrule Warriors 2.

I don't think you make that game to come out around this time if you're expecting BOTW 2 to come out the around the same time, since it probably has BOTW 2 hooks in it and you want to give people a chance to play and digest it before you release BOTW 2. I think Super Mario 3D World slots into the early 2021 time frame pretty well, which is what they did with New Super Mario Bros. 2. I think that New Pokemon Snap is a game that sells well literally whenever you release it. It's Pokemon! Pokemon has a massive fan base and they often put Pokemon spin offs in odd time slots because they know Pokemon fans are extremely dedicated. Plus it's weird to release 2 spinoffs (Hyrule Warriors 2 and New Pokemon Snap) at the same time.

I think Hyrule Warriors 2 benefits hugely from being the holiday release. It's got Zelda branding so people will pay attention, but it's in a different genre so people might be more willing to let it slide by at other times. Releasing it when people have some cash they want to spend and are more likely to take a chance on a game that's intriguing but not necessarily exactly what they want will probably maximize sales.

There might have been some other project intended to release alongside it, but Metroid Prime 4 doesn't make sense and they are already releasing the Mario collection and Pikmin 3 so they have substantial amounts of software on the shelves (even if lots of it is reheated.)

Nintendo announced the rebooting of Metroid Prime 4 development in January 2019, so nearly two years ago, not "this year." Not that I think the game is coming all that soon, but it's been in development for like 2 years. It may be a 2022 game, but I don't think holiday 2021 is totally unreasonable.

As for Zelda, comparing it to the development time of Breath of the Wild is meaningless. They were building an entire open world, rethinking Zelda conventions, designing the mechanics, etc. All of that is basically already done for the sequel. We know they are using the same game world and it's reasonable to assume the core gameplay won't be largely changed. Obviously they're going to be adding and changing things in the world and (hopefully) designing a bunch of dungeons and new areas to explore (the rumors are underground and underwater areas). All that said, to suggest that the development of BotW 2 will be anywhere near as long or involved as the first game doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Nintendo's holiday hits are Mario, Mario and Mario. Namely 3D All Stars, Game&Watch and 3D World. Those 3 will smash all selling numbers of the rest Switch, PS5 and Xbox products (in fact 3D All Stars is already one of the best selling releases).

Also as pointed by another user above, Nintendo usually does not rely on latest games, but focus on all hits launched during the console lifetime. Zelda BOTW, Mario Kart or Animal Crossing will still have a notable bunch of sales this christmas.

@ll_exile_ll: Sorry, it was 2019 for the reboot of Metroid Prime. It's been a long year. Regardless, 2 years is not enough to make a game like that from scratch. And I don't expect the next Zelda to take as long as Breath of the Wild, but we are talking about a 5+ year development cycle, so next year is the logical release date for that as well. Regardless, my main point is that Nintendo does not always have a major holiday title so the idea that something had to have been delayed is faulty.

I was curious about Nintendo's output during the Fall/Holiday timeframes so I took a look back at the last 10 years. I thought there would be some validity to them not caring as much about this period of season or it would at least be debatable. However, looking at their releases, seems like they care just as much as anyone. Even this year, they are trying to cobble together something and I think the narrative might change depending on how good Hyrule Warriors 2 and Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit are and how well they do.

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As someone who just got a Switch a bit ago, I have things to catch up on but the lack of games in the immediate, when I feel like Switch development should be really humming along, isn't great and a little concerning.

I always thought we'd get Metroid Prime 4 or in the very least Metroid Prime Trilogy Remaster, if only because that Paper Mario reveal trailer had a Metroid stinger at the end that felt very odd at the time. Felt like Nintendo winking at us saying, "Yes, Metroid news coming very soon!" Looking back, I guess it was just a weird goof.