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Games - Nintendo

Nintendo Buried Its Two Biggest Reveals at the End of a 45-Minute Direct. New Metroid and Kirby Games Were Worth the Wait

Wednesday's showcase was the second Nintendo Direct in three days and the first time the company has ever run presentations on back-to-back days. It opened with a Monster Hunter Wilds port and closed with the first look at Metroid Ravenous and Kirby and the World Beyond — bookends on a lineup that also quietly slipped in Persona 6, a Resident Evil trilogy and a new Tomb Raider.

By Gustavo Henrique · About the author

REDMOND, WASH. · SEP 9, 2026 ~8 MIN READ

Nintendo made its fans wait for it. Wednesday's Direct ran a tightly packed 45 minutes and touched on dozens of games, but the two announcements every Switch 2 owner actually wanted — new entries in the Metroid and Kirby series — didn't show up until the final stretch of the broadcast. It was the second Nintendo Direct of the week, arriving just one day after a Zelda-focused stream built entirely around the upcoming Ocarina of Time remake and a 40th-anniversary Zelda-themed Switch 2 console — the first time in the company's history it has held Direct presentations on two consecutive days. Where Tuesday's presentation was a victory lap for one franchise, Wednesday's was a scattershot tour of nearly everything else Nintendo and its partners have coming through 2027 — and it turned out the studio was saving its best cards for last.

In Brief

Nintendo's second Direct this week revealed "Metroid Ravenous," a new 2D adventure that strands Samus Aran on a moon after an ambush and lets her absorb energy from defeated enemies, launching on Switch 2 on January 28, 2027.
"Kirby and the World Beyond," a 3D adventure that hands Kirby a sword and a larger world to explore while keeping his signature copy ability, arrives on Switch 2 in spring 2027 during the character's 35th-anniversary year.
Beyond the two headline reveals, the show quietly confirmed Persona 6, a Persona 4 remake, Final Fantasy VII Revelation, a Resident Evil trilogy, and Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis for Switch 2 — a third-party lineup that ended up being nearly as newsworthy as Nintendo's own announcements.

Two franchises, Samus and Kirby, get something new

The first genuinely new game of the broadcast took nearly 40 minutes to show up: "Metroid Ravenous," a 2D side-scrolling adventure that puts Samus Aran back in a role the character hasn't occupied since "Metroid Dread." Nintendo's first footage frames the premise directly: after an unknown group ambushes her, Samus wakes up stranded on a moon with little chance of escape, and has to survive by draining energy from the creatures hunting her — an "eat or be eaten" mechanic Nintendo has repeated across every piece of promotional copy for the game. Beyond that setup, the company is staying quiet about where Ravenous actually fits into Samus's larger timeline, which is fairly typical for a reveal this early. It's set to launch on Switch 2 on January 28, 2027, alongside a standard edition, a special edition packaged with a steel game case, and a trio of amiibo figures — a Samus, a Chozo Statue, and a third figure modeled on her Metroid Suit that ships bundled with the special edition. Preorders opened the moment the segment ended.

Kirby got the closing slot of the entire Direct, which tends to be where Nintendo places whatever it considers its biggest swing. "Kirby and the World Beyond" reimagines the character in full 3D, arming him with a sword and what amounts to a Link-style cap while keeping his signature copy ability intact — he can still inhale enemies and borrow their powers, just with a blade now strapped to his side, set inside a larger, more open world than any prior Kirby platformer has offered. The game is scheduled for a spring 2027 release on Switch 2, timed deliberately to land during Kirby's 35th-anniversary year. Nintendo gave no firm date beyond the season, which is pretty typical for a reveal trailer this early, but the timing alone tells you how much weight the anniversary is carrying in the marketing plan.

The third-party lineup that almost stole the show

What didn't make it into most of the immediate headlines is how stacked the rest of Wednesday's third-party slate actually was. Atlus confirmed Persona 6 is coming to Switch 2, alongside a separate remake, Persona 4 Revival, dated for May 20, 2027 — the first time either mainline Persona entry has been confirmed for a Nintendo console day-and-date with other platforms. Capcom used the show to bring its survival-horror library to Switch 2 in force, with Resident Evil 2 Deluxe Edition, Resident Evil 3 and Resident Evil 4 Gold Edition all confirmed, alongside a new entry in the Tomb Raider series, Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis. SNK's Fatal Fury also got a slot, and Warner Bros. confirmed a Switch 2 edition of LEGO Batman is in the works. None of this got the closing-seconds treatment Metroid and Kirby did, but taken together, it's arguably the strongest single stretch of third-party commitments a Nintendo console has received since the original Switch's early years — Sony and Atlus effectively used Nintendo's own stage to signal that Switch 2 is no longer a secondary platform for their biggest franchises.

A console getting flooded with everyone else's games

Everything else in the show, almost without exception, was a game that already exists somewhere else finding its way to Switch 2. The Direct opened with a "Monster Hunter Wilds" port landing December 4 with local co-op and the game's Ascendance expansion built in, and confirmed that "Final Fantasy 7 Revelation" — the third and final chapter of Square Enix's remake trilogy — will hit Switch 2 on April 8, 2027, the same day as every other platform. Its prequel, "Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 Reunion," was made available on the console the same day as the broadcast. "Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity" is getting a "Definitive Edition" on February 25 with sharper visuals, more enemies on-screen at once, every piece of existing DLC, and a new harder difficulty setting; owners of the original Switch version won't get a free upgrade, though Nintendo is offering a discount and save-data transfer.

The rest of the show moved fast. "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered" arrives free for existing Switch owners on September 29, with the Switch 2 edition adding mouse controls, gyro aiming and touchscreen support. "Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2: Royal Edition" is coming to the console in 2027 with all of its expansion content included. "Pikmin 4" gets a Switch 2 edition on November 12 built around a new "Dandori Academy" mode and voice commands routed through the console's built-in microphone, while "Professor Layton and the New World of Steam" — said to carry the largest puzzle collection in the franchise's history — is set for December 10 on both Switch and Switch 2. Nintendo also confirmed a new gameplay trailer for "Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave" and revealed a Mega Man crossover fighting title, "Mega Man: Dual Override." The show closed out a run of smaller news that included a four-player split-screen update and three new stages for "Star Fox" on September 29, the GameCube-era "Star Fox Adventures" joining the Switch Online library the same day as the broadcast, a free Mario Kart World content update, and a new Bloober Team horror project confirmed as a Switch 2 exclusive for next year. Somewhere in the middle of all that, "Meccha Chameleon," the hide-and-seek game that sold more than 20 million copies on Steam within two months of its June launch, quietly became available on Switch 2 the same afternoon.

Commentary: Gustavo Henrique

If you want to know where Nintendo thinks its actual leverage is right now, just look at how this thing was paced. Dozens of games in 45 minutes, and a huge share of that runtime went toward convincing people that Switch 2 is a great place to replay stuff you might already own somewhere else — Witcher 3, Monster Hunter Wilds, a Final Fantasy trilogy closer, Kingdom Come 2, three separate Resident Evil re-releases. I don't even think that's really a knock. Ports are cheap goodwill; they make a young console's library look stacked without anyone having to build anything from scratch. But it does mean the only two genuinely original first-party things in the whole broadcast — Metroid Ravenous and Kirby and the World Beyond — had to carry the entire show on their own, and Nintendo clearly knew that going in. That's exactly why Metroid got the back half and Kirby got the literal final seconds. It's not a scheduling accident — it's the only way to make a Direct this dependent on other companies' games still feel like a genuine Nintendo Direct by the time it wraps up.

The part I think is getting undersold, though, is the Persona and Resident Evil news. A mainline Persona game landing on a Nintendo console on the same day as everywhere else would have been close to unthinkable five years ago — Atlus's biggest RPG franchise has historically treated PlayStation as close to its default home. Pairing that with three separate Resident Evil re-releases and a brand-new Tomb Raider tells me Switch 2's install base has crossed whatever internal threshold third-party publishers use to decide a platform is worth day-one support instead of a delayed port. That's a bigger long-term signal for the console's health than either Metroid or Kirby, honestly, even if it's Samus and Kirby who are going to sell the marketing. My honest question now is whether a firm January date for one first-party game and a shrug of a "spring" for the other is enough runway before the holiday lineup swallows both of them whole, along with everything else on that list. Either way, watching a first-party Metroid and Kirby land in the same window as Persona 6 and a new Resident Evil trilogy is a genuinely good problem for a Switch 2 owner to have.

HOW WE REPORTED THIS

Independently reported and written for this story — see our full editorial methodology for how we verify claims and separate fact from analysis.