You can be forgiven for thinking that because both Microsoft and Sony released their new consoles at the tail end of 2020 that this new year is going to be dominated by games made for the Xbox Series X/S and the Playstation 5. With Halo: Infinite delayed to 2021 and sequels to God of War and Horizon Zero Dawn slated to come out in the next twelve months, there is plenty of evidence to support this.
However, underestimating Nintendo has been its ace in the hole for the last two decades or so, ever since the Console Wars solidified into a three-way.
While Nintendo might not sell as many Switches this year when compared to Playstations (if you can find one), they are definitely going to have plenty of amazing gaming experiences that you would be foolish to sleep on, whether it’s new hardware, or long-awaited follow-up titles like Bayonetta 3, the only game where the heroine is a cross between desirable London escorts and librarians with magic powers.
Read on to find out everything you need to know about Nintendo’s plans for 2021.
The Switch Pro
While Nintendo frequently made upgrades to their handheld consoles like the Gameboy and the DS lines in the past, most changes to home consoles have only been cosmetic. If you bought a Nintendo 64 or a Wii, it had processing power under the hood whether you bought it on the day it came out or years down the road.
However, this is about to change with the Switch. In March it will be celebrating its fourth anniversary, which is typically halfway point for a console. While it has been selling like hotcakes the rumours throughout 2020 were that Nintendo was working on an improved version of the console.
Since it didn’t drop last year, everyone from IGN to Bloomberg is confident in their prediction that it will drop this year with better resolution and a more powerful CPU. For third-party games like Doom and the Outer Worlds which ran a bit clunky on the original switch, this upgrade will make them as smooth as butter. New games released after the Switch Pro comes out will still work on the original Switch, bit just at a slightly lesser graphic and performance output.
Everything’s Coming Up Zelda
While the spin-off game, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity being released at the end of last year, 2021 will definitely be the year for The Legend of Zelda series. If the 35th anniversary of Super Mario was any indication, the 35th anniversary for this famous medieval fantasy franchise should be epic. Fans are already frothing at the mouth over the sequel to 2017’s Breath of the Wild. On top of this, there are strong rumours that just how many Mario 3D games finally came to the Switch last year as part of a collection, the same might happen to Zelda.
It seems ridiculous that you can’t play such acclaimed games like Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker, and Twilight Princess on Nintendo’s latest console right now, so hopefully that situation will change in 2021. Rumours are that a remake of Skyward Sword is also in the works, and that will be interesting to play without relying on motion controls. Plus, no one is going to turn down the new Zelda swag.
Third-Party Domination
Know what happens when your console sells a ton of units? Other big video game companies want their games to be available on it so they can make even more money. Nintendo consoles have long made their own IPs like Mario, Zelda, and Smash Bros the big money makers for their consoles, but with the Switch’s success, you can play plenty of other big-name games like Skyrim, Witcher 3, Doom, and Bioshock as well. Suddenly having to own a Playstation or Xbox (or a top-level gaming PC) is no longer required.
At the same time, there are incredible independent games that are coming out (almost) exclusively on the Switch. The addictive rogue-like dungeon crawler Hades was one of the best games of 2020, and the only console you could play it on was the Nintendo Switch. Even 2019’s Untitled Goose Game was initially the same setup. This means that going forward there is plenty of anticipation for games like Blue Fire and the followup to Hollow Knight, Silksong.
Surprises Upon Surprises
While in the past the Nintendo would have several forty-minute presentations per year (called ‘Nintendo Directs’) to show off games that they were working on or were coming out soon, they largely abandoned this practice in 2020.
Where the typical process was to announce a big game a year before, give more details six months in, and then prepare the world with plenty of trailers and gameplay just before it drops, the company took a surprise approach last year. A single tweet and trailer release two months before release day. They did this with both Paper Mario: The Origami King and Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. Throughout the year there were much smaller presentations outlining the release of fewer games, but these came out with slightly more frequency.
The most likely explanation is that Nintendo wanted all these games to get attention, as when you have many of them announced in a longer forty minute traditional Direct, only the biggest names get attention, and the smaller titles get pushed to the wayside. Changing this up means more games might get their time in the spotlight.
The upshot to all this is that other than the handful of announced and heavily rumoured titles mentioned above, there are plenty of opportunities for surprises this year for the Big N. While it is Bayonetta 3, are we finally going to get very good news on the Metroid Prime franchise? They have to be working on the Super Mario Odyssey sequel, right?
