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2 minutes read

Nintendo Direct Enthrals with Mario Updates and New Kirby Game

nintendo direct viewership and chat mentions

The February 9th Nintendo Direct was full of new game announcements for later this year. Missing from the lineup, however, was news about Metroid Prime 4 and a sequel to Breath of the Wild. The two highly anticipated releases got plenty of chatter, with keywords getting 5,000 and 26,000 mentions in global Twitch chats during the release. 

Compared to last year’s Nintendo Direct, the 2022 had similar average concurrent viewers across all platforms and slightly fewer peak concurrents at 2.58 million viewers. The total watch time was about 0.6 million fewer hours than 2021, although that could be attributed to this year’s event clocking in at 20 minutes shorter. 

Stream Hatchet also compiled popular Twitch chat mentions to determine the most talked about games during the event. Key phrases around Mario garnered 62,000 chat mentions during the event. This could be attributed to the announcements of Mario Strikers: Battle League and 48 remastered courses being added to Mario Kart 8 as paid DLC. 

Kirby followed Mario with about 39,000 chat mentions. The newest 3D platformer, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, is a highly anticipated release with a “mouthful mode” that caught audience attention. Breath of the Wild followed Kirby with 26,000 chat mentions, despite no updates on a sequel. 

Xenoblade and Splatoon followed close behind with 20,000 and 17,000 chat mentions respectively. Portal received 13,000 chat mentions as its two games are being ported to the Switch this year. Fire Emblem and Metroid received 9,500 and 5,000 mentions respectively as well. 

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