Despite the cancellation of E3 2022, we all knew there would be a Nintendo Direct in June. Well, not only were we right, we were right twice. 2 Nintendo Directs graced our screens, that’s amazing right? …right?? Well, kind of, as both directs came with a hefty dose of *.

The first Nintendo Direct was released on Wednesday, June 22nd. It was just shy of 25 minutes… and only focussed on one game. It was announced 2 days before that this would be a Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Direct, which needless to say, disappointed many. The Direct itself was great, focussing on combat and other features that many Xenoblade fans were happy about. It just seemed a little tone deaf of Nintendo to release a game focussed Direct during a time period in which they usually release their biggest Direct of the year.

Still, many of us suspected that this was not all we would hear from the big N this month, and we were right. The second Nintendo Direct was released on Tuesday, June 28th. Again, the announcement came 2 days beforehand, where it was revealed to be a Nintendo Direct Mini: Partner Showcase… and you can imaging how well that went down.

Nintendo’s Partner Showcase’s have never been particularly good, and again, what people were anticipating was a Nintendo Direct mainly focussed on first party titles. Expectations were low… and then greatly exceeded. This was the best Partner Direct we’ve ever seen with a ton of cool announcements, updates on anticipated games, and just a lot of quality titles.

It’s unfortunate really. The controversy surrounding these Nintendo Directs has nothing to do with the presentations themselves, they were both quality, but they were both released at the worst time. Many were expecting a full standard Nintendo Direct, and whilst I’m not an advocate for expecting something that Nintendo has not announced, given the nature of this month I can totally understand the disappointment.

If we can look past the strange way Nintendo has gone about this however, we can see that there is a lot to be excited about. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 looks amazing! Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak is an insane amount of content for DLC. There are so many titles releasing soon that will be right at home on Switch; Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope, Live A Live, Pac-Man World Re-Pac, Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection, Sonic Frontiers, NieR: Automata, Persona 5 Royal, and that’s just to name a few. Plus we already know about Splatoon 3, Pokémon Scarlett and Violet, and Bayonetta 3 which are all coming later this year too.

What title are you looking forward to most, and why is it Pac-Man World Re-Pac?