Frankly, I am curious about what Nate heard that has shifted his tone and reasoning to start saying it seems to be a mini partner showcase on his end (though we probably won't know until after the direct, if at all, what led him to change his view seemingly abruptly as the day got closer).
Also as someone was mentioning several pages ago about why Persona in a partner showcase wouldn't make sense. I think people forget the developers don't really know ahead of time what type of direct their game would be shown in. Its very much possible that Nintendo made the deal to have the games revealed for Switch in a June direct early in 2022 which Atlus agreed on without Nintendo ever specifying if it'd be a general direct, mini direct, etc etc (back when E3 was still planned, it was probably arranged for E3 2022 Direct before event got cancelled). Developers usually have no say in what type of nintendo direct they would take part in and Atlus probably isn't any different and don't know until it really happens for the most part.
I think the same case happened with SMT3 and SMT5. Atlus made an agreement with Nintendo early-ish in 2020 to have them in a direct in the summer ahead of their releases (before everything went downhill) and Nintendo just ended up giving us partner showcases to hold up to their presumed obligation to Atlus and other developers to have it in a direct.
We used to have the "no general directs in the 2nd half of the month" rule we held so highly before the pandemic which Nintendo broke twice in 2021 (Feb 17th, 2021 and Sept 23rd, 2021). We can't really predict consistency from Nintendo now because nothing is locked in stone anymore and doing a 3rd party partner direct really cements that Nintendo really is a hard ball to predict for.