Internet hype surge after A shocking finale to The Latest Nintendo Direct
Nintendo Direct released a video on the 4th of September that stunned and shocked fans of the Xenoblade series with an upcoming re-vamp.
Nintendo is a large company. Founded in 1889 but not starting developing games until 1970[1], the company has gone through many changes to stay relevant and push the limits of what the available technology can do to provide entertainment. With over 190 games produced[1] in-house, and publishing many more, there are very few people who haven’t heard of Nintendo as a gaming company. The ‘Nintendo Direct’ Youtube videos is an attempt to inform and excite followers of Nintendo for upcoming releases of games and content. Conventions such as E3 are huge in scale and budget, Nintendo often showcasing the best of the best so Nintendo Direct is smaller in scale and much more informal.
What fans were not expecting at the closure of September 4th’s Nintendo Direct was a trailer for Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition. The Xenoblade series has had a strange reception with their various releases. The original Xenoblade Chronicles was released in the later life of the Nintendo Wii’s shelf life, selling 82,952 copies at launch[2] in Japan then gradually sold more by ‘word-of-mouth’, boosting the number closer to 200,000 by the end of 2013. While no exact number exists, Satoru Iwata, the now deceased fourth president of Nintendo, claimed the game actually did better in the West, postulating that the charm and open world nature of the game appealed to the ideal 90’s JRPG experience[3].
While strange for a game to succeed better in the West, the audience was there for a sequel. Tetsuya Takahashi led the Xenoblade Chronicles branch of Monolith Soft[4], a company that produced the Xenosaga games but upon finishing the series, separated into different branches. Takahashi went on to make Xenoblade Chronicles X, not a direct sequel, but ambitious nonetheless. It was much more sci-fi inspired than the original game, with a multi-player aspect that has not been seen in the later instalments. Many hardcore fans found the change too jarring, but Takahashi explained that “I’m someone who gets bored of whatever it was I did last” [5]
With the release of Xenoblade Chronicles 2, it seemed Monolith Soft had found their niche in the vast pool of high budget, good looking games of the time. The game became the best selling game the company had ever produced with over 1.13 million copies sold in 2018[6]. This meant it outshone the long running Xenosaga and other branch of the company working on Xenogears games. Capitalising on the ‘Open World’ featured in all the previous games, the ‘Definitive Edition’ of the first game that started all this incredible success is a welcome sight.
The ‘Definitive Edition’ promotes a graphical update that can be supported by the Nintendo Switch’s more powerful CPU, as well as areas cut from the original game likely added back in for the same reason. Fans of the series will be able to experience the game in it’s most refined state in late 2020.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo
[2] https://www.siliconera.com/2015/04/08/this-week-in-sales-xenoblade-chronicles-3d-isnt-really-feeling-it/ (Third paragraph down, ‘for reference’)
