Nintendo Direct: Switch 2 winter line-up revealed in 45-minute showcase

Nintendo aired its second Direct of the week on September 9, a 45-minute presentation focused on Nintendo Switch 2 games launching this winter. The show began at 3pm UK time (7am Pacific, 10am Eastern, 11pm Japan) and was followed by a roughly 110-minute Nintendo Treehouse: Live segment showing gameplay from games revealed during the Direct. The presentation streamed on Nintendo's official YouTube channel, with Eurogamer and other outlets covering announcements live as they aired.

The September 9 Direct was the second half of a double-bill. On Tuesday Nintendo aired a 34-minute presentation dedicated to the 40th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda, which showed the first gameplay of the Switch 2 remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. That remake is due November 5, one of only five Nintendo-published games with known release dates at the time of the Direct. The others are Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave on September 17, Nintendo Switch Sports Resort on October 22, Pokémon Winds and Waves in 2027, and Xenoblade Genesis in 2027.

With Zelda cleared from the board, the main question heading into the show was which franchise would take centre stage. Nintendo has not released a mainline 3D Mario game since Super Mario Odyssey in 2017, nearly a decade ago, though the team behind Odyssey spent the intervening years on Donkey Kong Bananza, which launched last year. Eurogamer noted that a glimpse of a distant Mario title might be wishful thinking given the Direct's stated winter focus, which technically runs to the end of February.

A release date for FromSoftware's The Duskbloods was widely expected, since the game is confirmed for 2026 but had no launch window. Eurogamer flagged the timing problem facing any publisher in that slot: an October release would be tight, and mid-November would collide with GTA 6. The outlet also anticipated possible Switch 2 footage of Witcher 3 Remastered after its Gamescom reveal the previous week, and a long-awaited Switch 2 version of Diablo 4 ahead of BlizzCon.

Speculation ahead of the show was unusually active. A new leaker, Malo932, had correctly predicted the 2026 Star Fox game, the Ocarina of Time remake, and the two Directs before Nintendo confirmed them. In YouTube comments the leaker claimed Nintendo has a new Super Smash Bros. game in development that is not a port of Ultimate, is reviving Nintendogs for the first time in 15 years, and has Mario Kart World DLC featuring Star Fox's Fox McCloud planned for 2027. Earlier claims from the same source pointed to a Super Metroid pixel-art remake, a new Wario Land, and a new 3D Mario adventure, all supposedly arriving in 2027. A second insider, NecroFelipe, teased Luigi's Mansion 4, while warning fans not to expect everything the leakers shared to be announced in this Direct.

Malo932 then deleted their recent YouTube comments and changed their display name to the word "stop," a move Kotaku suggested could stem from the leaker having shared too much or from concerns that their YouTube footprint might reveal their identity to Nintendo. VGC cautioned that the leaker claims were not specifically tied to this Direct, so viewers hoping to see all of them today could be disappointed.

Nintendo usually uses its Directs to update the Nintendo Classics service, and only one GameCube game, Pokémon Colosseum, is known to be on the way with no confirmed release date. The full contents of the September 9 show were being reported live as it aired, and the Treehouse segment that followed was expected to expand on the games revealed during the presentation.