Honestly, given that we're still a month out, there's no excuse for them not to do
anything around that time frame. It's just bad business not to get in on the hype, especially when people have more time at home and are looking for distractions.
Even a third-party centric, Nindies-like show would have been better than nothing. Instead, they're telling people to just show their games on their own? If the rumors are correct, then they are seriously dropping the ball, and leaving some of the smaller 3rd parties out to dry as well. As if they'd have access to a platform half as big as a Direct. If the little guys don't announce anything, they miss the wave. If they do just release their trailers on their own, they'll get lost in the noise.
My theory is that they don’t want to announce any system sellers while they are having Switch production problems.
That's an interesting take, but most of these games wouldn't be released until months later when the supply problems should be ironed out. Even by June supplies should be more or less sorted. It's a hype event, they should be doing something.
This is one of those instances of Nintendo being Nintendo for the worse. I guess you have to take the bad with the good.
