Nintendo Direct E3 2021 date and time confirmed, here's when to watch

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Followed by a 3-hour Treehouse deep dive

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(Image credit: Nintendo)

The Nintendo Direct E3 2021 event has an official date and time, and Nintendo's teasing a big helping of announcements about Nintendo Switch games.

According to the announcement, the Nintendo Direct E3 2021 event will kick off on June 15 at 9 am PT / noon ET / 5 pm BST and run for 40 minutes. The presentation will exclusively focus on games coming to Nintendo Switch, and most of the included titles will be planned for release this year. Following the end of the Direct will be a three-hour Nintendo Treehouse: Live event, where Nintendo will invite viewers to watch gameplay deep dives on "a handful" of Switch games.

It's looking more and more likely that Nintendo Switch Pro - or whatever Nintendo ends up calling the next Switch hardware revision - will be revealed before E3 this year. If Nintendo opts for a short-and-sweet reveal for its new Switch, it could leave plenty of room to follow up with demonstrations of how new games will make use of its improved hardware at the Nintendo Direct E3 2021 event.

Even if nothing comes of the new Switch hardware rumors, Nintendo could easily fill out 40 minutes just with the games we're already clamoring to see more of: the Zelda: Breath of the Wild sequel development team teased that they should have more information to share some time this year, and it would be off the hook to get some fresh Splatoon 3 gameplay. Then there's Metroid Prime 4, which we can always hope will take center stage once more after it restarted development in 2019.

Nintendo Switch is in a very strong place following a year of cooped-up people picking up new pursuits like Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and it's a sure bet that Nintendo will try to keep that ball rolling throughout the rest of 2021 and beyond.

See what else we're excited about with our guide to upcoming Switch games. 

Connor Sheridan
Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and was formerly a staff writer at GamesRadar.