The first Nintendo Direct took place 10 years ago today

If you can believe it, ten years ago today, Nintendo held its first-ever Nintendo Direct presentation.

On October 21, 2011, Satoru Iwata-san took to the podium to deliver news to Nintendo fans – directly – for the very first time. The first presentation was in Japanese only, with Reggie Fils-Aime doing one in English the very next day.

What started as an experiment has blossomed into an entirely new way of marketing to customers. Before, Nintendo was reliant on trade shows or media outlets to get news – for a publisher to bring information to people directly (yeah, I know). A move that since has been adopted by more and more gaming publishers.

Nintendo Directs can happen anytime, and now they can be for anything. While at first, they were info dumps for everything out in a quarter, now games have their own, and the schedule has become looser. The demand for Nintendo Direct’s from fans is so much that many people spend hours speculating when the next one will be – even sitting at night waiting at the top of every hour just in case there is one. 👀

Fun fact, Australia got its own Nintendo Direct once in 2014. It announced that Australia would be the only country outside of Japan to get the New Nintendo 3DS and New Nintendo 3DS that year. Our Direct hosted by the then Managing Director of Nintendo Australia, Tom Enoki. We haven’t got another exclusive one since.

Right then, when’s the next Nintendo Direct on?