Nintendo releases trailers for new ‘Zelda’ and ‘Pikmin’ games • TechCrunch

Nintendo hosted a forty-five-minute Nintendo Direct livestream on Wednesday, revealing upcoming games and updates for the Nintendo Switch.

As many gamers expected, Nintendo has shared a trailer for the highly anticipated “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom,” the sequel to the franchise’s beloved “Breath of the Wild.” The game will be released on May 12, 2023 and will be the most expensive standard edition of a game yet, priced at $69.99.

As the new game “Zelda” closed the presentation, the stream opened with a trailer for “Pikmin 4, which is slated for release on July 21, 2023. This is nearly two years after Nintendo teamed up with “Pokémon Go” maker Niantic to launch the AR game “Pikmin Bloom”, which encourages players to go out and collect seedlings. Perhaps the most important information here is that in “Pikmin 4” you can ride a dog named Oatchi.

Fans especially nostalgic for long-running Nintendo franchises had even more to celebrate. Nintendo Switch Online subscribers will soon be able to play select Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance games; the platform already offers some games from older consoles such as the Nintendo 64, NES, SNES and Sega Genesis. Some games, available today, include “Super Mario Land 2: 6 Gold Coins”, “Mario Kart: Super Circuit”, “Kirby’s Dream Land”, and “The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap”.

‘Zelda’ and ‘Pikmin’ have decades of history, but Nintendo has also seen success in newer franchises like ‘Splatoon’, which debuted in 2015 – the latest installment, ‘Splatoon 3’, is out on Nintendo Switch in September. “Splatoon 3” was the second best-selling game for Nintendo last quarter, with 10.1 million units sold (leading the list was “Pokémon Scarlet & Violet” with 20.6 million).

Fans of those ink-splattered punk rock squids and octolings have new material to look forward to in the months ahead. Nintendo has announced a paid expansion pack for “Splatoon 3,” which will span two waves: Inkopolis, launching this spring, and Side Order, which will come later. Inkopolis seems a little disappointing; it’s another setting to explore, but from this trailer it doesn’t look like the weapons and gear available will be different from what’s already in the game. The second wave, however, seems to be throwing us into a colorless, blank canvas of a world (which we’re presumably going to douse in shiny ink). It’s a bit more intriguing than a performance by the Squid Sisters (no offense to this very cool fictional band).

Other announcements include “Metroid Prime Remastered” (available now), “Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe” (released February 24), and expansion content news for “Mario Kart 8 Deluxe”, “Fire Emblem Engage and “Xenoblade Chronicles 3.”

To those keeping score at home: no, there was no update on “Silksong”.