A low-key Nintendo Direct belies the strongest lineup of 2022

polygon.com:

Once again, 2022 asks us to recalibrate our expectations of the game industry hype machine. This summer, megatons are out; minitons are in.

Nintendo pointedly swerved the vestigial hype bandwagon that was Summer Game Fest (otherwise known as not-E3) earlier in June, choosing to wait a couple of weeks before previewing the imminent Xenoblade Chronicles 3, and then another week before springing today’s heavily qualified Nintendo Direct Mini Partner Showcase on us. The show, Nintendo stressed in advance, would be short, and about third-party games.

Our expectations having been so thoroughly managed, it is hard to feel either over- or underwhelmed with the Mini Direct. We have been taught to expect huge news every summer and huge games every winter, and Nintendo’s PR, along with many other game companies’, is looking for ways to gently tell us that things don’t work that way any more, at least for now.

Nintendo and its partners are suffering the same post-pandemic production issues as the rest of the industry, and the Mini Direct’s announcements leaned disproportionately on the news that old games were coming to Switch. Portal! Nier: Automata! Persona 4 (and 3, and 5), at long last! Mega Man, Bomberman, Pac-Man — all the video game mans of old were present. Not that any of this is to be sneered at. Taking much-loved classics on the move on Switch never gets old, while maintaining the availability of classic games on new platforms is as key to the health of video game culture as it is to the health of publishers’ balance sheets in the lean times between new releases. It might be money for old rope, but rope was better back then anyway.

The lineup also showed how good Nintendo has been at identifying and nurturing a lower-key,