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Given the current situation, a Pikmin direct ahead of that release makes sense, but otherwise penciling in nothing other than September feels like the safest expectation. Perhaps they move up their normal September direct to be right ahead of Gamescom, but I wouldn't bet on it either.
One possible reason that sticks out to me is that Nintendo was stuffing the box for the end of their FY to ensure that they hit their financial goals. Particularly with bringing back the voucher program in NA, they aligned that with a bigger than normal software slate to get people buying.People have asked before, and I'll ask it again: is there any good reason to frontload H1 so much and leave barely anything for H2? If they were really running out of games to release this year, they would have spaced out releases a bit more in the first place, right?
That's why I'm confident we will get more news before Pikmin 4 comes out. June would be preferable so that they could spend more time in July promoting Pikmin 4. There's 5 months this year that are unaccounted for. I wouldn't be surprised if August and December have no releases, but there's a lot they can fit in between September-November. Throw in some DLC updates and announcements, then maybe one 2024 game, and suddenly you have more than enough content for a June direct. Then, in September, they could clarify release dates if needed and start talking about H1 2024.