Trivia / Nintendo Direct

• Died During Production: Some were worried Iwata's passing in 2015 would bring an end to the Directs. While his passing did bring an end to Iwata Asks, a game developer interview series he hosted that started around the same time — though it would eventually see a successor in "Ask the Developer" starting in 2021 — Nintendo Directs continued on; albeit not without a delay and a decrease in frequency from near-monthly worldwide General Directs to triannual ones.
• Distanced from Current Events:
  • A Nintendo Direct was supposed to come out on September 6th, 2018, but was delayed for a week due to the Hokkaido earthquake, which affected the company's home country.
  • The September 13th, 2022 Direct was livestreamed worldwide... except for in the United Kingdom, due to Queen Elizabeth II having passed away mere days prior. Instead, the Direct was made available on-demand. This later turned out to be due to the The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sequel's final name being revealed as The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which would've come off as tasteless during the royal family's period of mourning.
• Schedule Slip: The September 2018 Direct was supposed to air on the 6th of the month, until a powerful earthquake struck Hokkaido, Japan in the early hours of that morning. This prompted Nintendo to delay the Direct another week out of solidarity for the victims of the quake.
• Sleeper Hit: The original Nintendo Direct was released to help boost the profile of the Nintendo 3DS, which was struggling after launch. Using webcasts as a way to update online Nintendo fans proved so popular that it became a regular event, even replacing their traditional E3 press conference, and by the next decade, several other publishers and developers (including Sony Interactive Entertainment and Xbox Game Studios) would have their own equivalents.
• Teasing Creator: Towards the end of the December 2013 installment, Iwata declares that there's only one game left to showcase... and ends up actually showing two: Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U and Mario Kart 8. This is due to the Smash trailer starting off with an animation of Kirby landing on Rainbow Road and interacting with the racers, as if he's going to be in Mario Kart. Iwata then admits that the Smash trailer starting off with that scene was an unplanned coincidence on Masahiro Sakurai's part.

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