A supposed leak full of sensitive Nintendo information published earlier this week on the message board NeoGAF looked a little more solid this morning thanks to some new corroboration. If it’s all true, we may be seeing Nintendo’s next console—along with both Wii U and NX versions of Zelda—later this year.




On Monday, a NeoGAF poster named Trevelyan9999 published a large list of Nintendo information that he claimed was from “an internal US marketing budget and scheduling overview for 2016.” Trevelyan, who also posts YouTube videos covering various Nintendo rumors, said the company’s mysterious new hardware, code-named NX, will be out this holiday season. He also listed 2016 marketing budgets for Wii U ($34.5 million), 3DS ($56.25 million), and the new Zelda ($10 million), which Trevelyan said will still come to Wii U as promised and will also show up on the new machine.

Purported Nintendo leaks are a dime a dozen, of course—every year someone comes up with a big fake list of games they claim are coming to Nintendo platforms. But this one has proven to be at least partially true.


In the post, Trevelyan offered a list of the first-party 3DS games scheduled for the rest of this year. Other than the games we know about, the list mostly features codenames like “Caviar F” and “Torte City,” as well as a nugget that’s proven pretty interesting as of this morning: “Pokémon 20th Anniversary game ‘Niji.’”

It’s no big shocker that Nintendo is releasing new Pokémon games this fall, as the company announced this morning. What’s way more interesting is that “Niji” codename, which hadn’t been announced or publicized anywhere before Trevelyan9999's post. As it turns out, the new Pokémon games are called “Sun” and “Moon.” But a look at the Pokémon website this morning revealed a curious file name:

Materials sent to press announcing the new Pokémon games also used “Niji” in their file-names for the Sun and Moon logos. It’s common for video game logos and press material to use a game’s codename. Sometimes, the developers who create those assets don’t actually know what the final titles will be. Curiously, Nintendo has since changed the logo’s file-name on its website from “niji-11-en” to “sun-moon-11-en.”

Also curious: Last night, Trevelyan9999 removed videos from his YouTube channel and pulled articles from his website that referred to this leak. It’s unclear whether he did this of his own volition or because Nintendo’s lawyers got involved. When I reached out, he declined to comment. We’ve also reached out to Nintendo for comment.


So what does all of this mean? Nothing is certain—and we have not been able to confirm any of this with our own sources—but the fact that Trevelyan9999 nailed the Niji codename adds some fascinating credence to a leak that might be real. It’s possible that only portions of the leak are true and that others are incorrect or outdated, as was the case with the giant Xbox leak that hit NeoGAF in early 2014. That leak correctly revealed information about unannounced games like Scalebound and Crackdown 3 but was incorrect on other, minor information, like the exact details of the Halo collection.

It’s still not clear exactly what the NX will be. Pundits have theorized, based on Nintendo’s hints, that the mysterious piece of hardware may be a hybrid portable and console.


Whether or not this leak is real, this should be a fun year for Nintendo fans. Nintendo has said they’ll unveil the NX by E3, which is in June.

You can reach the author of this post at jason@kotaku.com or on Twitter at @jasonschreier.