I have this absolutely irrational hatred of Nintendo Directs that I cannot put into words at all, but I'm sure as hell gonna try (albeit briefly because tired)
I think it stems from the same issues that I had with E3, and I say this as someone who was very much A Gamer™️ in the mid-2000s, where I counted down the days until I could see a 5-minute trailer of The Wind Waker just so we could have total silence again for the next 6 months. There's this absurd clamour for content in gaming communities1 and things like, historically, E3 and now Nintendo Directs fill that void.
And it's frustrating, because it's so goddamn corporate. I don't remember when I started hating these things, but it infuriates me in ways I can't reasonably put into words that people I care about and respect will fall over themselves to watch an hour-long advert and then be mildly disappointed. That says nothing for the people who will insist on repeatedly watching hour-long adverts and then complaining relentlessly about them!
I'm really glad E3 became something of a joke. It makes me unbelievably happy that the most memorable E3 moments are the terrible ones like Ninety-Nine Nights 3 being extreeeeeeme because that's all E3 has ever deserved, and I cannot wait for Nintendo Directs to hit that same level of "this is just corporate sleaze that nobody cares about" - and they definitely are! And, like, some people will be interested in that kinda stuff, just like there are people genuinely interested in E3 year after year despite its fall from grace, but it baffles me that people will mock E3 and say they hate the corporate sellout side of it, and yet drop everything to watch Nintendo do exactly the same thing through their own channels.
There'll always be a most successful way to market things. I just really wish that successful method didn't rely on people actively searching for and watching the adverts specifically, and I really wish the company doing it wasn't one of the most actively anti-user companies in the industry today. But at the very least, I will sit and seethe every time a new Nintendo Direct comes out and people I respect suddenly drop everything so they can watch an extended ad break.
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There's probably a lot that I could write about streaming & Twitch within that too, and why the streaming mindset being as unhealthy as it is stems from the gaming industry's unhealthy practices, whether that be crunching or the desperate need to market everything, even the most unmarketable aspects of the industry. But that's a whole other post for another day maybe.