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Well, folks, dawn is still a few hours away, but I can't sleep, so I'm going to post this now. 2½ months have somehow already passed since it was announced; we can finally say that today is the day of the Switch 2 Direct!  To kick our days off right, let's talk dreams: What's your one - singular - dream game announcement for today's Switch 2 Direct? 

Just finished rewatching this..and man, what an oddly paced presentation this was. The opening was pretty much perfect: recap of what we'd seen up to this point, accessories, confirmation of region locking going away, launch date and prices (only JP and US, Europe got the "check with your local retailer" treatment ), talk about the hardware and the trial period for NSO. Seamless transition from hardware talk into 1-2 Switch, the first proper game trailer of the show. Takes about 15 minutes to get these essential details out of the way.  It's then a constant back and forth between first-party trailers and the stage – totally forgot Fire Emblem Warriors was a thing, and wow, what a totally nothing trailer that got! If I'm remembering right we got that Fire Emblem Direct end of Jan/start of Feb? – before third-party is handled so weirdly, from Koizumi verbally confirming Dragon Quest X, XI, and Heroes I & II as coming to Switch on behalf of S-E, before back-to-back trailers for SMTV and Project Octopath Traveller. For my count, this was only the second time in the entire show that one trailer rolled directly into another, the other time being from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 into that naff Fire Emblem Warriors trailer. Then there's Nagoshi, Todd Howard, Suda51 and Patrick Söderlund turning up one after another, either on-stage or via a pre-recorded video, to endorse the Switch – such a strange and varied bunch to have present in some way as the big third-party representatives, and it's then onto a montage which announces/reveals 20+ games, more than doubling what had already been confirmed/shown up to this point in the show (40+ games shown all told, they confirm 80+ titles in the works for the platform at the time of the show).  By far my biggest gripe with this showcase, watching it back now, is how these games are trickled out. The show becomes so stop-start, and the montage not naming the games being shown is such an odd choice; even now looking up a full list of games shown at the event, comparing to my gaps in knowledge when trying to list the games shown, I struggled to identify a couple of them! I hope if there's a montage in the Direct tomorrow that they have the decency to flash titles up throughout, so that you can pause and know what exactly it is that you're looking at.  Reggie in a pre-recorded video talking about the "atmosphere crackling with posts and messages all about Nintendo Switch" was a hilarious level of hubris Nintendo really had no right to back in January 2017, and yeah, that send-back to Kimishima where they're asking when the release for Breath of the Wild is for Kimishima to just put it off a little longer is so awkward, especially when we didn't know at this point that it would be a launch game!  But, the show wrapped up on that Breath of the Wild trailer, which to this day I rewatch every now and then, and remains one of my favourite trailers of all-time. I wasn't even a Zelda fan when I tuned in for this back in January 2017 and yet I remember I was feeling emotional and overwhelmed by how epic it all was, not to mention it being like 90% gameplay and 10% cutscenes, 100% in-engine, and just having that sound design add some punch to the moments the music is building up or choosing to take a quick break. By far my favourite part of the trailer still to this day is when we go from the floor of Zelda's emotional breakdown and quickly and expertly build back up to the highest of heights through the epic music climbing, shot of Link on horseback in Hyrule field, the charged ice arrow let loose into the head of the Stalmoblin piercing the orchestra with the sting of the ice arrow head making contact, and Daruk's "here it comes!" Perfection.  Honestly, think my biggest...not concern, or even worry, but point I've just had to accept going into the Direct tomorrow personally is that we probably don't get a trailer that hits as hard as that one. It's not a fair pressure to put on Nintendo - even trailers for Tears of the Kingdom didn't stack up; this BotW trailer was a generational one, by far my favourite for any game on the Switch - but otherwise? This rewatch emphasised to me just how smart a move it is for them to go with the Direct format for this. Even though it was still well-paced, that's with the asterisk that it was well-paced *for a live event.  Think they could easily fit in hardware talk and any online/NSO updates in 10-15 minutes (depending on if they feel the need to recap what will be similar coming from the Switch) considering they covered it all in 15 minutes back in January 2017, of course then leaving a full, meaty Direct-length amount of time to focus on games. Assuming there's a montage here, I think it's a pretty safe bet there'll be 50+ shown tomorrow.  Alright, time to rewatch their E3 2017 showing 

So you think that Simply Games is adding a premium to the instalment plan? From a quick Google they seem to offer credit through Paypal Pay in 3, an option which doesn't usually add any extra charges to your total so I wonder if Simply Games is offering a bundle or something. But it could be accurate, given inflation and all the mad shit going on in the US.  £500 is surprisingly high though, I never expected Nintendo to make it that expensive so I hope it will be cheaper. 

I'm expecting two SKU's, one at £349 or maybe even £399, and one with more storage and maybe Mario Kart pre-installed for £500. The Switch launched at £279 and that was a fairly cheap chipset which we know Nintendo got a great deal on. Better hardware, more storage, inflation etc...

Yeah, that makes sense. I'm guessing they've updated it somewhere in the background with the price ahead of tomorrow (placeholder or not), which is only showing in a Google search, and that installments plan has just been automatically generated off the back of that same figure.  Nice find either way! I'm honestly more surprised we didn't get slammed with April Fool's versions of this cropping up all day