Nintendo in 2018

We are nearly three months into the year and I don’t know what is going to happen with Nintendo in 2018. This is equally invigorating as it is curious because they unloaded the big franchises last year as the Switch was new and needed desperately to gain instant traction so a Wii U rehash didn’t happen. At this point nobody really knows anything about Nintendo’s plans throughout the year except for more Wii U ports (Bayonetta 1 and 2 just released and Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze coming in a few months) and of course, in September Nintendo will finally release whatever their version of a paid online system looks like.

At this point last year, fans were curled under the covers dreaming of the Switch’s launch day knowing Zelda was coming with it and Mario Kart, Splatoon 2 and of course Super Mario Odyssey were coming less than a year from the release of the system. Not to mention new Nintendo IP debuting on the system with Arms and 1-2-Switch (even though they didn’t seem to spark much fanfare) and a random albeit enjoyable collaboration with Ubisoft with Mario and Rabbids all filled out a pretty loaded first year for a company that has all but abandoned trying to keep up in the third party rat race.

There are probably two ways to look at Nintendo in 2018 with the optimist angel saying there are surely mysteries to be unfolded at E3 and throughout the year that fills in the gaps, third parties are more interested in developing games specific to the platform because of the enormous success of hardware sales one year in and something has to be coming alongside the launch of making people pay for an online service from a company that has thus far shown an ineptness in providing a current or forward-thinking online infrastructure with their hardware. The pessimistic devil is shouting more re-releases, third-party re-releases and… A SMASH BROTHERS RE-RELEASE. Having Wii U re-releases ravish the Switch isn’t inherently a terrible idea or bad thing for consumers. Most people didn’t play Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze, Bayonetta 2 was criminally underplayed even Mario Kart 8 wasn’t seen by most people simply because the Wii U wasn’t seen in most people's living rooms. Having Smash Brothers come out alongside the online program seems like an inevitably assured event, and even if it is a slightly enhanced version of the Wii U game, that will garner enough goodwill to calm the what’s coming out on Switch this year questions. Hopefully, though, Nintendo has something up their sleeves because it’s starting to feel like they just want to crutch through this year, leaning on re-releases and lower tier franchises. No offense to Kirby and Yoshi, who are both slated to debut on the Switch with a new game, but many of those games simply do not hold a candle to the big hitters. It’s not to say there isn’t enjoyment to be had with those games, but they have mostly turned into unbelievably good looking titles with some sort of visual identification (yarn, paper, etc.) that play similar to the previous games.

I really don’t know what to expect from Nintendo this year, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. There is extreme curiosity around what they have for E3 and if they have a big surprise slated for this fall. Unlike last year, where the calendar was packed with Nintendo big hitters and new IP before the Switch even launched, this year is full of question marks. Can Nintendo match the output from 2017, probably not, but they can surprise fans with a couple of games and carry the goodwill to the next few years where they could be set up to make the Switch one of the most fully realized and amazing game libraries ever.