Welcome back to the Wire Weekly, where I, Ben “gotta catch some of ‘em” Fruzzetti, run through the week’s assortment of Nintendo news with what could charitably be referred to as wit, sarcasm, and personality.
There are a number of companies and properties that I’m pretty sure have the potential to take over the market to such a degree as to encapsulate domination of the human species — Disney, Amazon, Google, etc. But I think the past week has revealed a bit of a dark horse — the House of the Electric Mouse. Sure, Pokémon as a franchise has been fairly ubiquitous in a certain contingent of millennial life for a long time, but helping monitor your sleep? Officiating your weddings? Byzantine and ill-conceived product names like “Pokémon GO Plus+”? This is all starting to sound very zaibatsu-esque. I’m expecting The Pokémon Company to be directing funerals next.
Squirtle, please get down from there, it’s not a good time.
The two announcements that honestly catch the eye the most are Pokémon Home and Pokémon Masters, which are both overdue for different reasons. Home is what feels like the umpteenth attempt to have a more consolidated way to transfer Pokémon around, which will hopefully pan out well enough to be permanent going forward. Masters, meanwhile, looks to be a more engaging mobile experience, as well as an acknowledgement (however tacit) that people don’t care about just the Pokémon — they’ll shill out for the human characters too.
Can’t wait for a swimsuit version of this guy.
The other significant bits of non-pocket monster news this week come from the Labo VR side of things. Obviously, the big ticket is the Smash Ultimate update that allows for VR spectator matches (among other things), which is neat without stretching things too bad to fit a VR mindset. More exciting going forward, however, is Unity supporting Labo VR development, opening the door for more VR experiences on the console from third parties moving forward. I don’t have any snark for that — it’s great! More development tools are always a good thing.
On one last note, we also got a Cadence of Hyrule release window for June. This one in particular’s got me stoked – -I’ve talked about it before, but I’m just plain excited for an inventive and creative indie developer getting a stab at the Zelda license. It’s cool! Video games are cool! … Most of the time.
I could do without this one, for example.
That’s all for this week! We already know of a Pokémon Sword & Shield Direct coming up this week, so we have that to look forward to, along with other potential pre-E3 shenanigans. Until then!
Leave a Comment
Written by Amelia Fruzzetti
A writer and Nintendo fan based in Seattle, Washington. When not working for NinWire, she can be found eating pasta, writing stories, and wondering about when Mother 3 is finally going to get an official localization.
