If you’ve been waiting for a big Nintendo Direct to quench your thirst for new Nintendo news, you might be going thirsty. What’s becoming more and more clear is that Nintendo is slowly trying to back away from the quarterly big-bang Nintendo Directs, instead focusing on delivering news via the Nintendo Today app and other methods rather than banking things up quarterly.

If you look at the cadence of Nintendo Directs, we’re usually looking at one in February or March, one around June (or previously E3), and then one later in the year. With the crossover between the Switch and Switch 2, things were a little messy for a while as Nintendo didn’t have much to show and were banking things up for the Switch 2 out of necessity.

Since the introduction of the Nintendo Today app, itself announced in a Nintendo Direct, the company has slowly started to announce new games, amiibo, and even movies via the app for earliest consumption directly to Nintendo fans, before relaying the information on social media around half an hour to an hour later.

The app is developed in such a way that us, the media, and fans can’t easily share content from it without directly linking to the app. The app itself requires a Nintendo login, so the folks doing that are going to be Nintendo fans, or at least people who own something Nintendo. It’s only a small window that this information remains exclusive to the app (Nintendo hasn’t given up posting to other social networks just yet), but the FOMO you get that you might miss something drives people to check the app multiple times a day, or at least wait for the notification to come through.

If you look at it on paper, there are really only two massive things that have been dropped on the Nintendo Today app so far: Splatoon Raiders, and The Legend of Zelda film and the actors cast in it. There’s also a smaller list of Partner Directs, specific game events, and Indie World showcases that are first dropped on the app. Now, we’ve always had these smaller Directs, but they do appear to be gaining in frequency. Nintendo is also using Nintendo Direct marketing for five-minute updates on The Super Mario Galaxy movie. The dilution of the Nintendo Direct began a while ago, but it’s at its most diluted now.

But why now? Not five years ago?

Nintendo Directs probably are an absolute pain to pull together. It must require almost every branch of Nintendo working together, to get the third parties who will feature involved (and to keep their mouths shut), then have it localised with correct local dates, subtitles, and/or dubbing.

Aside from one or two games, almost all the games in a Nintendo Direct are out within the period before the next Nintendo Direct.

Nintendo has been going from whoa to go in about three to six months for most game announcements (again, the Switch 2 situation muddies this a bit, but that’s the overall trend). You don’t get many games announced and then hear nothing for two years like with other consoles.

Having smaller Nintendo Directs or announcements via the Nintendo Today app allows Nintendo to be more flexible and drop news still on their own terms. That still requires the work of all Nintendo branches, marketing, and retail, but for one game at a time. Just look at the list of announced Switch 2 exclusives from Nintendo. There are four, and just two of them have release dates, both out within the next two months. If I were a betting man, I’d say Fire Emblem and Splatoon Raiders won’t be far behind, and if they are delayed slightly then something else will slot in before them. That’s the flexibility of stepping back from big Nintendo Directs. Splatoon Raiders may have had a date announced if there were a Direct last month or this month, and then Nintendo would have been stuck with it. With this newer strategy they can just slot something else in, or say nothing, and we’ll never know.

Then again, there’s still more than a week left in March, and Nintendo could still drop a big massive Direct and make everything you just read pointless. But we’ll find out, won’t we, just maybe not today.