Nintendo Direct happening today - a Breath of the Wild 2 release date unlikely

(Image credit: Nintendo)

The next Nintendo Direct presentation is scheduled to happen on February 9, 2022, and will be approximately 40 minutes long. The pre-recorded showcase will focus on Nintendo Switch titles launching in the first half of 2022, according to the official announcement from Nintendo of America's Twitter account.

The Nintendo Direct presentation will air at 2pm PT / 5pm ET / 10pm GMT, and will be watchable live on Nintendo's official YouTube channels. If you can't watch the presentation live, though, fear not. Nintendo will publish the broadcast to its official channels, as well as trailers for most of the individual announcements after the broadcast has wrapped up. Just make sure to stay off of social media if you don't wish to be spoiled.

Tune in 2/9 at 2 p.m. PT for a #NintendoDirect livestream featuring roughly 40 minutes of information mainly focused on #NintendoSwitch games launching in the first half of 2022.📺https://t.co/v0A3I7j0EE pic.twitter.com/jifj1aFIBQFebruary 8, 2022

The Switch has a decent amount of first and third party titles coming in the first half of 2022, including Kirby and the Forgotten Land which is launching on March 25, as well as Triangle Strategy a little earlier on March 4. However, we could also see surprise release dates for Splatoon 3 and Bayonetta 3, both of which currently hold a vague "2022" as their current release windows.

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Less likely to make an appearance, then, is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2, which still seems a ways off as we've still not seen any gameplay segments outside of the last teaser trailer shown at E3 2021. We'd love to be surprised here, of course, but we don't expect to see anything from Breath of the Wild 2 until E3 2022 at the very earliest.

As for Metroid Prime 4, that's anyone's guess. The long-awaited sequel restarted development at original trilogy developer Retro Studios a little over three years ago. We won't hold our breath, but here's hoping Samus's next first-person outing finally makes an appearance at this Nintendo Direct.

We love surprises at TechRadar, so we'd be delighted to see an out-of-nowhere announcement or two. Monolith Soft fans have been clamoring for a Switch port of the Wii U's excellent Xenoblade Chronicles X, an announcement that would go down well, considering Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is still a rumored entity.

Rhys is TRG's Hardware Editor, and has been part of the TechRadar team for more than two years. Particularly passionate about high-quality third-party controllers and headsets, as well as the latest and greatest in fight sticks and VR, Rhys strives to provide easy-to-read, informative coverage on gaming hardware of all kinds. As for the games themselves, Rhys is especially keen on fighting and racing games, as well as soulslikes and RPGs.