Daily Briefing: Tuesday 8th February

There’s a Nintendo Direct tomorrow

Ah, this is always an oddly fun little piece of new to give. Nintendo will hold a new Nintendo Direct presentation tomorrow, Wednesday 9th February, at 5pm EST/2pm PST. The presentation, the first since September 2021, will cover any number of things across its 40-minute runtime. Nintendo’s upcoming Switch-centric lineup (RIP the 3DS) includes games like Kirby and the Forgotten Land, and Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp, but we don’t have a huge amount of information on what’s happening beyond that.

• All this means that the stage is set for a pretty solid Direct presentation. Community expectations tend to go absolutely wild whenever a new Nintendo Direct appears on the horizon and, judging by Twitter at least, this time is no different. As soon as the date is confirmed out come the predictions, the hopes, and the dreams. The most-anticipated Nintendo Switch games at this stage are likely Hollow Knight: Silksong and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2. The Zelda sequel is still expected to launch this year, so we’re bound to hear something about it soon, right?

Take-Two Interactive are confident of the quality of future Grand Theft Auto games

That’s straight from Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick who, speaking during the company’s most recent earnings call, said that Take-Two and developers Rockstar are focused on generating quality. Responding to an investor question, Zelick said “yes, we are totally focused on quality here and we always want to deliver the best possible experience.”

• Zelnick’s words come after Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition was widely criticised at launch for being a buggy, glitchy mess masquerading as the definitive edition of one of gaming’s most beloved and historic franchises. Discussing the Trilogy directly, Zelnick said “very occasionally we fall short, and I think the trilogy was an example of that, and the title was launched with some issues. We’ve addressed many of them, there are more fixes to come. Going forward, we remain highly focused on quality, and we are exceedingly confident in all of our upcoming releases.” So there you go.

PlatinumGames want to talk about Scalebound

That’s according to Platinum president Atsushi Inaba and vice president Hideki Kamiya who, speaking in a new interview with IGN Japan, said that they would very much like to revisit the Scalebound and, for the first time, expressed an interest in opening communications with Microsoft. Inaba said “Kamiya has always wanted to do Scalebound. So we’d like to have a proper discussion with Microsoft.” Kamiya, who served as director on the ultimately doomed project, added “we did a lot of work on it, and it’s no use Microsoft keeping the game in its current form, so we’d like to do something about it (laughs). Phil! Let’s do it together!”

• Scalebound was an action RPG originally unveiled as an Xbox exclusive in 2017 before eventually being cancelled. We’ve gotten little snippets of news and reasonings in the years since but we’re still without a concrete idea of why the dragon-filled adventure was ultimately canned, and who was really to blame for its cancellation. Inaba said in a 2019 interview that it “wasn’t easy” watching Microsoft take the brunt of the blame for the cancellation, with the Platinum president adding “both sides failed. [The game] didn’t do all of the things that we needed to do as a developer.” In the years since, Hideki Kamiya has kind of shifted the narrative to assume sole responsibility for the game being shelved. Still, could we see it again some day?