- The 18th June 2024 Nintendo Direct was a surprise hit.
- Many new games and updates were announced.
- Which of these big reveals pulled in the most views?
After tempered expectations and continuous reminders that “there will be no mention of the Nintendo Switch successor during this presentation”, expectations for the latest Nintendo Direct were rather low. In a surprise to most the presentation was packed with surprises and big reveals, but what managed to make the biggest impression?
Following the Nintendo Direct, individual trailers for each reveal are uploaded to the official Nintendo of America YouTube channel. It’s from here that we’re going to look at the view count for each trailer and use that to determine what was “most popular”.
Now we know views on YouTube aren’t a direct indication of popularity, but it does gives us a decent view of what got people most excited, and what was watched on repeat by the biggest fans.
We also realise that this is not only skewed to the West, but specifically to America. Nintendo UK, for example, also has its own official YouTube channel but it is absolutely tiny compared to America with less than half a million subscribers compared to America’s 9.53 million. That number even eclipses the Nintendo Japan YouTube channel which sits just below three million.
With all of that in mind, here are the top ten trailers from the Nintendo Direct, ordered by their view count at the time of writing.
Click on the names of each game to be taken to their trailers.
- The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom – 1 730 780 views
- Metroid Prime 4: Beyond – 1 007 438 views
- Mario & Luigi: Brothership – 999 247 views
- Super Mario Party Jamboree – 497 164 views
- Among Us – New Roles – 331 761 views
- Donkey Kong Country Returns HD – 290 288 views
- MARVEL vs. CAPCOM Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics – 280 123 views
- DRAGON QUEST III HD-2D Remake – 190 965 views
- Hello Kitty Island Adventure – 134 703 views
- The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy – 114 066 views
Zelda takes the win in the number one spot as the Princess finally gets her own game after decades of the franchise with Link at the helm. This puzzle title has already generated a lot of discussion online but we’re a bit surprised just how popular it has become in the less than 24 hours since the Nintendo Direct.
If we were the betting type we would have put money on Metroid instead of taking the gold here. For those who have maybe forgotten – and you’ve been forgiven for all the time that has passed since then – the original reveal of Metroid Prime 4 happened more than seven years ago, on 13th June 2017. The game hit a massive delay when its development was restarted, news the public learned in 2019.
After all this time we would have thought that Metroid Prime 4, now with the subtitle of “Beyond” would be the most popular reveal from the announcements, and maybe that will change in the future, but for now Echoes of Wisdom is the top dog.
Taking bronze here is Mario & Luigi: Brothership, another title that has earned lots of hype in the past few hours from fans of past games.
Our personal pick that garnered the most excitement was the return of MARVEL vs. CAPCOM. We’re not the best at fighting games but these titles are classics for a reason, and it’s always nice to see all corners of Marvel’s pantheon, especially mutants and the X-Men, getting the spotlight, which hasn’t been the case for many years as Disney focused more on the characters it has licences for in the MCU.
That is likely to change as Disney bought up the competition and has access to these subsets of heroes again, so we can only hope for more in the future.
Lastly, we have to give a shout out to Hello Kitty Island Adventure which squeaked in at ninth place. This game is rather well known not for its own merits, but for a passing mention in the famous World of Warcraft episode of South Park is how many people know of it.
