Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Gaming
  3. News

Nintendo Direct Mini June 2022: How to watch and what to expect

Joseph Yaden
By
Summer Gaming Marathon Feature Image
This story is a part of the Digital Trends Summer Gaming Marathon coverage 2022

A Nintendo Direct will air on June 28, though this upcoming presentation will be different than you might expect. Instead of a traditional first-party digital event, this showcase will be a Nintendo Direct Mini: Partner Showcase, focusing on third-party games coming to Nintendo Switch. Here’s how to watch and what to expect from the upcoming showcase.

Recommended Videos

A new #NintendoDirectMini: Partner Showcase is on the way! Watch on-demand via our YouTube channel beginning Tuesday, June 28 at 6am PT for roughly 25 minutes of info on upcoming third-party #NintendoSwitch games.

Subscribe & turn on notifications here: https://t.co/SZA1P3RSHS pic.twitter.com/8hmCJ1p5EX

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) June 27, 2022

When is the Nintendo Direct Mini?

The Nintendo Direct Mini: Partner Showcase will air on Tuesday, June 28 at 9 a.m. ET. You can watch it on the official Nintendo YouTube channel.

What to expect from the Nintendo Direct Mini

Since the upcoming showcase will focus on third-party Nintendo Switch games, you should expect to see appearances from various publishers across the globe. Nintendo didn’t confirm which publishers will participate, but odds are the showcase will have something from the likes of Square Enix, Capcom, Atlus, and maybe even some Western companies as well. It’s likely the event will highlight upcoming Nintendo Switch ports, along with a handful of indie games, too.

We’ll likely get another look at the Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak expansion and the Cuphead DLC ahead of their June 30 releases.

What not to expect from the Nintendo Direct Mini

You shouldn’t expect any games published by Nintendo to be shown at the upcoming Direct Mini. That means we won’t see any of the company’s major games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2, Splatoon 3, and Metroid Prime 4. The only Nintendo-related game you might see during the broadcast is Ubisoft’s Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope. Nintendo’s fall 2022 slate is still unknown, so it’s possible we’ll get a proper first-party Direct sometime during the summer. For now, viewers will have to wait to see what Nintendo has in store for later in 2022.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Joseph Yaden
Joseph Yaden
Joseph Yaden is a freelance journalist who covers loves Nintendo, shooters, and horror games. He mostly covers game guides…
State of Play February 2023: how to watch, what to expect
Deadshot, Harley Quinn, King Shark, and Captain Boomerang in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.

The snow is slowly melting, spring is fast approaching, and PlayStation has announced its first State of Play of 2023, slated to air today. Since the last State of Play live stream aired in September 2022, God of War Ragnarok released to critical acclaim and swept The Game Awards with six trophies (including Innovation in Accessibility and Best Performance). The PlayStation VR2 also just dropped with Horizon Call of Mountain to hold VR fans over until other games come out -- some of which will be announced during the show.

As such, there's a lot riding on the show. Sony's 2023 plans are a little cloudy at present as its not currently clear what's coming beyond . While we may not get a blockbuster announcement of that scale here, we should get a better idea of what's coming from third-party and indie devs, as well as what's in store for PSVR2 post-launch. Here's how you can watch this month's State of Play stream and what to expect from it.
When is the February State of Play
The February State of Play is scheduled to air today at 1 p.m. PT. While it's not clear how long the stream will run, the PlayStation Blog confirmed that it will include more than 15 minutes of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League footage, so expect it to last upwards of 20 minutes.

Read more
Pokémon Presents February 2023: how to watch and what to expect
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet protagonist holding glowing Poke Ball

Pokémon Day 2023 is nearly upon us, and it will bring another Pokémon Presents showcase full of exciting announcements regarding the long-running series. As Pokémon Scarlet and Violet were quite successful despite technical problems, a lot of fans are curious to learn what's next, both for those individual titles and the franchise as a whole.
Pokémon fans who want to learn about the series' future should certainly tune into this presentation. If you're wondering how to watch it and what kinds of announcements to expect for the first Pokémon Presents of 2023, we've rounded up all of that information here for you.
When is the February 2023 Pokémon Presents?
This Pokémon Presents showcase will start at 6 a.m. PT on February 27, which is Pokémon Day, as well as the 27th anniversary of the series. The Pokémon Company says the presentation will last "around 20 minutes." 
How to watch
The February 27 Pokémon Presents will be officially live-streamed on the main Pokémon YouTube Channel. We'll embed the live stream below ahead of the presentation. Other sites and Pokémon-themed content creators will likely be co-streaming the event as well. 
https://twitter.com/Pokemon/status/1628032454295531522
What to expect
Unfortunately, The Pokémon Company was light on giving any real hints as to what we'll see during this Nintendo Direct-like presentation. But if this showcase falls in line with previous Pokémon Presents live streams, then we can expect it to give us an overview of all the big Pokémon titles coming out this year. Currently, we don't know if any brand-new Pokémon games are launching in 2023; if there aren't, then hopefully we'll see some DLC for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. 
Some leaks may have also spoiled some of the Pokémon Presents' surprises. Leakers have found data for more new Pokémon forms that could potentially come to Scarlet and Violet via updates. Meanwhile, fans found mention of Spike Chunsoft in the new Pokémon Together website's source code, so it seems likely that a new Pokémon Mystery Dungeon from that developer is coming soon. Regardless of what's actually announced, February 27 is shaping up to be a really exciting day for Pokémon fans. 

Read more
Don’t expect Zelda’s $70 price to become the new Switch standard, says Nintendo
Link looks at his hand in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

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?  
When asked why it chose Tears of the Kingdom as its first $70 Nintendo Switch game, a Nintendo spokesperson simply reiterated that the company will "determine the suggested retail price for any Nintendo product on a case-by-case basis." Still, it's a surprising choice for Nintendo to make that pricing change to just one exclusive game almost six years into the Switch's life span. Jijiashvili thinks the choice to do this with Tears of the Kingdom was a pretty apparent one for Nintendo, although it won't apply to everything going forward.
"If you are going to make a game $70, it's going to be the follow-up to one of your most critically acclaimed and bestselling games ever," Jijiashvili tells Digital Trends. "I don’t think that this means that $70 will become the standard price for all major Nintendo releases. It's worth noting that Metroid Prime Remastered is priced at $40. It's clear that Nintendo will remain flexible about first-party title pricing."

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.
"The games industry has already been experiencing a lot of inflationary pressure," he explains. "AAA games are much more expensive to make now than they used to be, but prices have actually been declining in inflation-adjusted terms -- if prices had risen with inflation since 1990, they would now be over $90. On top of that, we’ve had a big burst of general inflation, meaning that publishers are looking at big increases in everything from salaries to tools. It’s going to be really hard for most publishers to avoid passing on all those extra costs at some point."
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. 

Read more