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A Nintendo Direct event is rumored this month. Expect some release dates

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Nate Barrett/Digital Trends

Nintendo’s 2019 schedule isn’t set in stone right now, with only a few of its games having final release dates or even windows, but that could change this month. The company is rumored to hold one of its digital Nintendo Direct events, and we suspect we’ll learn more about its plans for the year.

According to Gaming Intel, Nintendo will hold the next Nintendo Direct event in January, possibly on January 10, and we’re looking forward to hearing about some previously announced games. These could include titles like Yoshi’s Crafted World, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Daemon X Machina, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3, and Bayonetta 3.

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Most of these games have vague 2019 release windows, but as we move further into the year, we’re sure to get more specifics. This will likely also include news on the Switch-exclusive Pokémon role-playing game that’s in the works, which will be aimed at the more traditional crowd rather than the casual players of Pokémon: Let’s Go.

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As Twitter user and market researcher Stealth pointed out on Twitter, however, last year’s Nintendo Direct event in January was also used to announced completely new games.

If there is a Nintendo Direct within the next few weeks (which I think we all believe), it is bound to be an insane one. Last year's January Direct revealed 6+ games for the first time, this should be no different. Will not be one to miss.

— Stealth (@Stealth40k) January 3, 2019

If you don’t remember, this event is where we learned about Dark Souls Remastered on Switch for the first time, as well as the Switch ports of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze and Hyrule Warriors. Mario Tennis Aces also made its debut during this event, as did DLC for Super Mario Odyssey and Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle.

With the success of the Switch and last year’s Mario Tennis Aces, it seems likely that a new Mario Golf game is coming to the system, as well — whether or not that will be announced during the Nintendo Direct this month remains to be seen. Other franchises we haven’t seen in a while include Advance Wars and Kid Icarus, though the chance of those coming back are fairly low, as Intelligent Systems is busy on the Fire Emblem series and Kid Icarus: Uprising director Masahiro Sakurai is also in charge of Super Smash Bros. We could hear about Metroid Prime 4, but since we have seen zero footage of it thus far, don’t expect to get a release date just yet.

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Gabe Gurwin
Gabe Gurwin
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Gabe Gurwin has been playing games since 1997, beginning with the N64 and the Super Nintendo. He began his journalism career…
Nintendo Switch loses an exclusive Square Enix game next month
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On top of that, this remake of a 1994 SNES game also gives the experience an extreme visual facelift with the HD-2D visuals that make games like Octopath Traveler 2 shine. Digital Trends found the game charming, with George Yang saying Live A Live "has the hallmarks that make it a good entry in the genre" in his three-and-a-half star review of the title. 
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The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will be Nintendo's first Switch game to be priced at $70. News that Tears of the Kingdom, a sequel to one of the bestselling and most critically acclaimed titles on the system, will have an increased price compared to its predecessor came as a surprise over three-and-a-half years after its announcement. It also raised questions about what the future of pricing for Nintendo games will be, especially as Sony, Microsoft, and third-party publishers all upped the cost of their new games in recent years. 
While Nintendo will release Tears of Kingdom at $70, a spokesperson for the company tells Digital Trends that this will not always be the case for its first-party games going forward. 
"No," the spokesperson said when Digital Trends asked if this is a new standard. "We determine the suggested retail price for any Nintendo product on a case-by-case basis." 
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – Official Trailer #2
To get more insight into the price shift, I spoke to Omdia Principal Analyst George Jijiashvili, who explains what has caused the price of games to go up in recent years and how Tears of the Kingdom demonstrates that Nintendo will "remain flexible about first-party title pricing." Ultimately, Nintendo fans are finally starting to feel the impact of inflation that's been sweeping across the game industry, even if it's only "on a case-by-case basis" for now.
The price is right
Nintendo claims that not every one of its significant first-party game will be $70, and we can actually already see that in action. Preorders just went live for Pikmin 4, which launches on July 21, after Tears of the Kingdom, and it only costs $60. Still, Zelda's price tag indicates that going forward, Nintendo will at least consider raising the price of its most anticipated games to $70. But why start with Tears of the Kingdom?  
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It makes basic financial sense for Nintendo to ask for a little bit more for a game it knows will be one of the biggest releases of 2023. But what factors in the game industry and world's economy at large caused Nintendo to make this decision? 
Priced Out
For more than a decade, people got comfortable with AAA video games being priced at $60. Of course, there were occasional exceptions to this rule, but it was seen as an industry standard until the dawn of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Publisher 2K was one of the first to announce a price increase, and companies like EA, Sony, and Microsoft have all followed suit. Jijiashvili chalks this up to inflation-related pressure on game publishers.
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Jijiashvili provided us with a graphic created by Omdia that "shows what the typical price points for each generation would look like if you adjusted for inflation." As you can see, the inflation-adjusted prices are only exponentially growing, and the big game pricing shifts the graph highlights were all technically not even enough to keep up with inflation when they happened. 

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