Nintendo has stated that the coronavirus has not impacted its game releases for this fiscal year. The company has to spread out a series of sparse reveals after E3 2020 was cancelled. As a result, gamers have been left wondering which games are still up the firm's sleeve for release this year.
Nintendo has taken to ing game trailers on its social media channels to make up for the lack of a formal Nintendo Direct presentation, a decision that has proven to be divisive amongst fans. In April, Nintendo surprise dropped a trailer for the then-unannounced Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
A tweet from USJ (translated via NintendoSoup) reported on a live broadcast from Nintendo's shareholder meeting. During the meeting, the house of Mario was asked about the measures it was taking against Covid-19, and if employees were working remotely. Nintendo responded by saying that it did have countermeasures in place against the virus, and that development was taking place remotely with some delays. Despite minor delays with development, Nintendo did state that there is currently no impact on the releases for this fiscal year (which begins on April 1, 2020 and ends on March 31, 2021), but warned that there could be significant delays if a second wave hits Japan.
There are a few different titles that could be impacted by the possibility of a second wave, though not much is known about Nintendo's lineup for next fiscal – let alone this fall. DLC. Continued of Animal Crossing: New Horizons will also happen through the rest of 2020, as will the arrival of Super Smash Bros Ultimate DLC. Truth be told, fans won't know if anything is delayed until Nintendo drops either another surprise trailer or Direct at some point later this year and confirms some new games.
For now, fans can only wait for more announcements in the future and hope that Nintendo can successfully get through these rather challenging times with its current release schedule intact. At the end of the day, however, the safety of the workers at the company is more important than getting games out the door as quickly as possible. Should a second wave hit Nintendo, fans might have to prepare to be patient for a little while longer for entries in their favorite series to be released.
Source: Twitter (via NintendoSoup)
