In about four hours, Nintendo will host their next Nintendo Direct broadcast. As far as we’re aware, this will be a Japan-only event. That means most of the announcements won’t be of much interest to most of this blog’s readers, but there’ll probably be a couple of interest nuggets. You can watch the live stream after the break.
The event begins at:
Don’t miss it!
Update: Ten minutes until show time!
Nintendo has confirmed their next Nintendo Direct broadcast for the 29th of August. The event will focus on the 3DS and will be streamed via the usual venue at 8pm in Japan. This is 4am PST, and 7am EST. You can check after the break for a Swapnote message from Iwata about the broadcast.
Nintendo is working on Demon Training for the 3DS, which is the next game in the Brain Age series. They recently held a ten-minute presentation devoted to the game, and you can watch it after the break.
Nintendo of Japan has launched an official YouTube Channel for Nintendo Direct. This will provide an archive of all the future broadcasts (along with a couple of the ones that have already aired), and they might even be streamed live via the site itself. YouTube does have live streaming functionality, so it’d make sense to have it all in one place. You can click here to see the channel.
During a previous Nintendo Direct broadcast, Demon Training — another game in the Brain Age franchise — was announced for the 3DS. This game is the focus of the next broadcast on July 18th. But the broadcast itself will only last for ten minutes.
New Art Academy was announced for the 3DS during the recent Nintendo Direct broadcast. It features “32 brand-new lessons” that will “have you painting and drawing your own masterpieces and sharing them with your friends and family in no time”, and a few of the reference images in the lessons have been converted to 3D videos, providing them with a small degree of animation (such as “a tree with moving leaves or a river with flowing water”). The application will be available on July 28th in Europe and September 13th in Japan.
This is what they said:
At E3 we had very specific announcements that we wanted to focus on. We had a lot of things to talk about, and we had to decide which things were most appropriate for each method of announcement. E3 is just one of the many opportunities for companies to make announcements, and we’re always looking for the most appropriate ways to both inform and surprise consumers.
But that’s just how they’re spinning it. The real answer, I think, is that Nintendo wants more control over how and when they announce whatever they want to announce. The reliance on E3 forces them to announce things at the same time every year. That doesn’t always make the most sense though. As such, they’re “training” us to expect big announcements via the Nintendo Direct broadcasts. That means they can announce things when it suits them, rather than on any sort of external schedule. Or at least, that’s how I see it.