The Nintendo Today! App is a Bizarre Manifestation of our Dystopian Lives
The Nintendo Today! app is an uncomfortable reminder of video game's consumerist heart
In the final Nintendo Direct for the original Nintendo Switch, Nintendo ended the show by announcing Nintendo Today!, a daily Nintendo news/calendar app designed to be a new avenue to advertise Nintendo content to their players. The move is the latest of many by Nintendo to turn the company into a 'lifestyle brand' like Apple, making the company a persistent and unavoidable part of your daily life. This has included a dedicated music streaming app for Nintendo game OSTs, a deluge of mobile games designed to be played daily like Pokemon Go, various theme parks across Japan and America, a new megastore dedicated to Nintendo merch in San Francisco, various film releases, and even a Nintendo themed alarm clock, Alarmo, that allows you to be whispered awake by the Princess of Hyrule every morning.
Video games have long had a consumerist streak that goes through the heart of the industry. While initially intended to be a trade show for the industry, E3 quickly became a yearly gathering point for video game fans to be advertised to about upcoming games and consoles. Over time the amount of these shows has only increased, Nintendo themselves at the forefront with the "Nintendo Direct" format that they debuted in 2011. Over the past 15 years this format has evolved into being the predominant way that hardware manufacturers and publishers alike promote their games year round, with players excitedly sitting down to watch anywhere from 15 minutes to 2 hours of consecutive advertisements.
With the release of the Nintendo Today! app, Nintendo are looking to reshape the way gamers recieve their news about upcoming releases. Changing it into a slow daily drip feed that keeps them thinking about upcoming Nintendo products every single day. When this was first announced I couldn't help but feel a chill go down my spine, the app feeling uniquely dystopian, even among their continued push into every part of their most ardent fans lives.
Beyond the deep rooted discomfort at the premise of the app, a morbid curiosity began to form that lead me to keep an eye on what exactly they were putting out on the app in the lead up to the Switch 2. This quickly illuminated a level of confusion around the app for me, as Nintendo clearly struggled to have interesting things to present every day even with an entire new console on the horizon. While some days might provide an interesting look at a Mario Kart track and a new update to the Switch 2's operating software, some days would be a single screenshot of Fast Fusion and a montage of people playing the Switch 2 at an offline event.
Video: Reddit User u/SkullGhost - a 3D look at the Nintendo Switch 2 box
In isolation these updates were fine but would hardly justify keeping an advertisement app on your phone and I can only imagine how unimpressive this app will be as Nintendo naturally have lulls in releases during the Switch 2's life cycle. This was going to be my conclusion to this article until something strange started happening. Everyday a new Nintendo Today! app video or revelation would start going mildly viral in various gaming spaces, particularly things around Mario Kart World's free roam mode and anything to do with the console itself (even just a simple look at the box it will come in).
The app continues to fill me with a mild sense of dread around the state of the world but it at least seems to be effective marketing and the proliferation of the news from it on social media reduces the need to keep the adverts directly on your phone's home screen. That was until users began to notice that Nintendo have added anti-recording protection to the app in an attempt to push people towards building the daily routine of checking the Nintendo Today! app. This as pointed out by reddit user "Cube_play_8" is also a concern for the archiving of Nintendo Switch 2 promotional material should the app at any point be discontinued.
Ultimately, the Nintendo Today! app feels like a natural conclusion of gamer's long standing willingness to be advertised to, as their excitement for upcoming art clashes with the capitalist motivations of the industry's largest companies, but it doesn't make me any less uncomfortable about it.
