Prior to Nintendo hosting the latest Nintendo Direct Mini presentation, GameStop accidentally sent out an early tweet confirming that the Direct would take place.
The internet has been ablaze over the past month with speculation and rumors surrounding an unannounced and unconfirmed Nintendo Direct. Speculation began late last year when a leaked document from EA revealed an announcement to take place during a Nintendo Direct on January 11. Last week, Amazon added and quickly removed 18 placeholder pages for unannounced Nintendo Switch games, which further led the community down the rabbit hole of speculation. Yesterday, even GameStop got in on the fun by posting a strange and potentially revealing Tweet about Nintendo and its plans.
On January 10, GameStop posted a message from Twitter that a Nintendo Direct was happening in 45 minutes. The message went on to comment that the company was excited to see what Nintendo was planning for 2018 and asked the community to comment on what they were hoping to see. The Tweet itself was deleted almost as quickly as it appeared, likely intended to be a Tweet scheduled for a later date. Naturally, this message raised a lot of eyebrows from fans and went on to further stoke the flames of speculation for potential games coming to the Nintendo Switch. As we now know, all of these rumors and speculation were actually true.
Those who continued to hold out hope that Nintendo was indeed preparing an announcement on January 11 were finally rewarded. As it turns out, that accidental Tweet was apparently a sign that GameStop actually knew what was going on and tried to prepare something in advance. Prior to today, Nintendo found itself in a somewhat precarious situation as fans built up so much hype for a Nintendo Direct that, at the time, technically doesn’t exist, that not announcing anything at that point would have been a massive letdown.
Throughout all of the chaos, Nintendo remained silent on its plans, which unintentionally went a long way to further whip the fan base into a fury. Over the past week, things have continued to smoulder with the community so much that Nintendo has taken notice and even trolled fans by posting a strange image of Chibi-Robo on fire. Without any context or clues, the Tweet itself has amassed over 5,000 comments and the hope that this image represents an upcoming announcement and not just the company having a bit of fun with all the speculation.
