Okay, I’ll bite with some oddly specific guesses to keep things interesting.



January Direct. More from stuff we’ve already seen. Yoshi. Kirby. Octopath. Kirby looks surprisingly good but doesn’t attract any new converts while Yoshi is mostly met with a shrug. Fire Emblem is properly rolled out and has impressive production values, the pandering is toned down a bit from Fates but isn’t going to please anyone who thinks Awakening ruined the franchise. Fully voiced, English voice acting is a step up from Zelda and Xenoblade but isn’t anything that’s going to win awards. We get just enough footage of Metroid to confirm that it exists, but not enough to quell endless internet debates about how exactly it’s going to turn out.



Some talk about UI and QOL updates for the system. Netflix is coming etc. Badge Arcade is coming to the Switch, wow!



Indies and third parties. GTAV for Switch is unveiled with much pomp and circumstance but none of this is first party so I’m not gonna spend time speculating on what else could be coming.



New Mario Party. It doesn’t look great. The Warioware/Rhythm Heaven team shows up with one of the promised new Ips that showcase the joycons. It gets a much warmer response than 1-2 Switch but ends up selling less because it missed launch.



EAD 5 makes a surprise appearance with ExciteTank! - an out of left field Nintendo take on the combat simulator. It becomes the butt of jokes about Nintendo’s 2018 output but comes out to pretty decent reviews and response, immediately going to sell only like 250,000 copies. There’s one crazy gif that comes out of it that gets reposted to “underrated Nintendo games” threads for years to come.



The “one more thing” is Smash. It’s called “Super Smash Brothers Tussle” or something but is basically an expanded Smash 4 port with all characters returning, 3ds and Wii U stages, a new but not particularly impressive single player component, and like 7-8 new characters at launch with the promise of DLC for at least the next couple of years. The first new characters showcased are Inkling and a surprise character from a Western developer.



That’s it for January. Animal Crossing gets revealed at a random direct and releases within a year. We don't get any Wii U ports beyond Bayonetta. We do get a Skyward Sword HD, but not from Grezzo. Retro announces their new game at E3, it’s a big budget entry into a genre under-served on Nintendo hardware but it’s also a stylized E-rated title so opinions run the gambit. 2019. Metroid gets a full trailer and it looks really good but there’s one weird thing about it that leads to a 30-page despair thread. 2019 as well. There’s a new 2D Mario that drops the “New” series and it looks pretty fucking great. 2018. Pokemon misses 2018 despite strong internal efforts but they do release a new Mystery Dungeon or whatever. Pikmin 4 is still missing, somehow.



This is more optimistic than I’d usually be but the recent 20 mil internal forecast makes me think they have to be pretty confident about their line up. I could easily see one of Smash, Animal Crossing or 2D Mario not making it if they’re betting on Pokemon showing up or they’re more confident with their new quirky ips than they have any right to be. Thank you for reading my fanfiction.