Yesterday's Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase included a lot of great-looking games, but it arguably raised more questions than answers about what the remainder of Switch 2's first year on the market is going to look like. According to Kit Ellis, Nintendo of America's former director of social media marketing and original content, it's very out of character for the publisher to not have release dates for its slate locked down by this point in the year.
"It's just not passing the sniff test for me, and it all seems a little suspicious," Ellis says in a new episode of the Kit & Krysta podcast. "Having worked there, it gives me certain feelings that things are not going as smoothly as maybe Nintendo would want. I think there's a lot of uncertainty. I think there's a lot of concern. And I think, frankly, they're trying to put on a brave face and carry on as if everything's okay, while at the same time really trying to get a handle on what's happening with these games."
Ellis says there are currently five major upcoming Switch 2 games for 2025 without release dates: Elden Ring, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, Metroid Prime 4, and Kirby Air Riders. Accounting for the technicalities that the "winter" release window of Hyrule Warriors could stretch into 2026, and that Metroid Prime 4 is technically billed as a Switch 1 game with an upgrade, I think it's easy to see the point – that's a lot of games central to the Switch 2 lineup that we still don't have a release date for here in August.
"I'll tell you, that's not normal," Ellis says, "and it's making me worried about the state of these games and whether they're all going to make it out this year." We're now deep into the summer, and Ellis says "there's a reason E3 used to happen in June": because it was the right time to reveal release dates and build marketing plans so consumers could make their holiday shopping plans, which according to Nintendo's market research, starts as early as September.
"It's very possible that one game is holding everything up," Ellis posits, suggesting that if even one of these big titles hasn't yet settled on a release date, it becomes difficult to settle on a launch plan for any of them. He also suggests it's possible third-party developers have struggled to get hold of Switch 2 dev kits, which may be holding up the process further.
It's not like any of us are lacking for games to play these days, but Ellis says "the concern goes beyond that. It's that Nintendo is having trouble – and the partners are having trouble – getting games finished on this new platform, when they've already communicated that they're launching this year. Again, that's not the Nintendo that I know, that is usually so on top of the dev teams and their cycles and these dates."
