Nintendo has had an interesting 2018 after the massive success that was their last year with the release of the Nintendo Switch, and some very powerhouse titles such as
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and
Super Mario Odyssey. The reason for this year being an interesting one is that their lineup hasn't really been as grand in scale compared to last year's, to the point it seems like they focused on having a great launch year but didn't plan ahead.
Nintendo's E3 was also severely lacking when it came to showing off new titles, although they did say their presentation would focus mainly on
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and that they would only show games that were coming out in 2018—meaning that there were no
Pokemon or
Metroid Prime announcements, which are literally the upcoming heavy hitters.
During the last Nintendo shareholders meeting, Tatsumi Kimishima—in his last meeting as the company's president—revealed that they are not backing down from shipping 20 million Switch units for this 2018. That certainly is a lot of consoles expected to be sold for this year but it isn't as unexpected given that the
Switch actually managed to sell over 17 million units last year.
When asked about this year's E3 presentation causing a decline in the company's stock value, Kimishima explained that they are not yet ready to comment on the matter but they will be sharing the information with their customers at a more appropriate time. In regards to upcoming games for this 2018, Kimishima simply said that it's a "
powerful lineup".
The Nintendo Switch is a console that has proven to have a lot of potential but a console it's meaningless without proper games to support and justify its purchase. We do know that
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is coming out this December— which is considered to be a console-seller—but other than that, there aren't really any other first party exclusives that guarantee hardware sales.
Having said that, Nintendo doesn't really care much about announcing new titles during E3 presentations given that they release their Nintendo Direct videos whenever they actually feel like showing off new titles—so it is safe to assume that more games are still getting announced in the coming months, and before the end of their fiscal year. Let's just hope they don't release another Nintendo Direct when all they do is talk about
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for 30 minutes and they actually announce or show off new titles.