Nintendo might be up to something sneaky when most of the internet has looked away.
Hours after releasing a video that highlighted a few game releases on the Nintendo Switch for July, Nintendo changed the title of the video to cover all of Summer.
This response came extremely quickly for seemingly no reason, unless the month gives away a vital piece of information, specifically about the release window for the newest Super Smash Bros. Ultimate DLC character.
Nintendo think they slick by changing the title huh pic.twitter.com/O3e2wh5Ahl
— Hackoru (@HackoruTV) July 17, 2019
Speculation ran wild once the video titled initially “Nintendo Switch – Fan-Favorites & Newest Releases – July” popped into people’s subscription feeds. The reason being, along with titles with set release dates in July like Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order and Fire Emblem: Three Houses, we also got a brief glimpse of Smash.
When Nintendo announced that The Hero, a collection of protagonist characters from the Dragon Quest series would be coming to Smash Ultimate, they never gave an official release date. Instead, all fans got was a splash screen that let them know the DLC would be coming at some point during the summer.
Flash forward to when this video went live, it started by showing Fortnite Season 9 – content that is already out on the market. Then it went into Ultimate Alliance 3, a game that is set to release on July 19.
Smack dab in the middle of Ultimate Alliance and Fire Emblem, which will release on July 26, was the short little burst of Smash content. What this led many to believe is that The Hero would be released between those two dates.
This would fit Nintendo’s timeline for releasing DLC, as Joker from Persona 5 released on April 17, which was also a Wednesday. If Nintendo put out The Hero on July 17, that would not only keep with the trend of dates but also make the character and any other subsequent content added to the game eligible for EVO 2019, since that is the cutoff date.
That is unlikely, so the next answer would be a July 24 release right before Fire Emblem.
However, after the internet went wild thinking about a potential DLC drop within the next week, Nintendo changed the title of the video. The company replaced July with Summer, potentially trying to cover up the fact that they let the release window shrink on accident.
This wouldn’t be the first time content release windows for Smash Ultimate have been screwed up as Nintendo also let the Stage Builder mode leak early by accident. Though this also isn’t the only reason that they could have done this.
Fortnite’s ninth season of content didn’t release in July, which means the Summer title change could have just been to encompass that. The main reason it was included outside of the game’s popularity is probably the fact Season 9 ends on July 31.
If something as simple as that were the case, then the next best guess would be Nintendo holding the release of The Hero until EVO 2019. Most developers that have a game at EVO announce some content during the final day of competition for that game.
It would make sense for Nintendo to hold The Hero until then, shadow drop of on Finals Sunday, Aug. 4, showing a small trailer for him and letting fans watching at home get in on the fun. This would also be a fantastic time to show of Banjo-Kazooie again and officially announce that DLC’s release date too.
If Nintendo could couple that with announcing the fourth character live at EVO, they would be the talk of the internet for days following the event.
Whatever the cause of the change, it has given the internet reason to look way too closely at this small move in hopes of finding the big conspiracy Nintendo could be hiding – however unlikely that is.
