The Switch 2 already has a very solid lineup of upcoming games, but as Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser appears to tease the existence of a new mainline Mario game, two former Nintendo marketing leads believe there’s no chance of the company announcing a major release like that before it’s ready.
Ex-Nintendo Minute hosts Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang (also respectively NOA’s former director of social media marketing and original content, and former senior manager of creator relations and original content) have been speaking about things Nintendo can do (and some things it won’t) to shake off some of the negativity surrounding its upcoming console in a new episode of their podcast (below).
Ellis points out recent comments made by Bowser in an interview with CNN, who hinted that fans should “stay tuned” for Mario news, teasing that the company has “a long, long catalog, and a long list of [intellectual property] that I’m sure will make its way to the platform.”
Acknowledging that some fans have wondered why the company wouldn’t just announce what it’s working on instead of “teasing the new 3D Mario game,” he says: “We just don’t think they’re going to rush any major game announcement before it’s time.”
Expanding on this, Ellis believes that the company already has “at least the rest of this year mapped out in terms of game announcements, and Nintendo Directs, and partner stuff, and reveals like that,” and will stick to that plan.
Watch On
Beyond these laid-out plans, Yang explains that Nintendo is a very developer-focused company, and ultimately wouldn’t jump the gun on any game announcements before its creators were ready.
“There’s no way from a development side they would let the marketing team dictate the timing of announcements before a game is ready. This is very much a company that’s driven by the developers, and when they’re good and ready to announce something, you work your marketing plan around it,” she elaborates. “So using that as a lever to market Switch 2 is just non-existent.”
Ellis continues: “If I’m Mr. [Yoshiaki] Koizumi [Nintendo senior executive officer and general manager of the Nintendo Switch], and the head of marketing comes to me and says, ‘Oh, people are mad about the Switch 2, we better announce the new Mario game,’ he’d say, ‘Well you better fix that. Let me know when you fix that and we can announce my game.'”
“He’d be sipping his coffee and slam the door in your face,” Yang jokingly adds.
Clearly, Nintendo is going to stick to what it thinks is the best course of action. There’ve been a lot of vocal complaints since the Nintendo Switch 2 news really kicked off at the start of this month, particularly surrounding the price of things, but based on how much demand there’s been for Nintendo Switch 2 pre-orders, it doesn’t seem like the company is going to have any trouble selling the console, cries to “drop the price” be damned.
Again, we already know plenty of upcoming Switch 2 games, too, from Mario Kart World to Donkey Kong Bananza, so we’re not looking ahead to an empty release calendar right now, but who knows what else the company has in store for us?
Nintendo wasn’t ready for how in-demand the Switch 2 would be in Japan, as boss warns there isn’t enough stock from its official store to fulfill the 2.2 million lottery sale applications.
