Super Mario Odyssey – it’ll most certainly be revealed at a Nintendo Direct, but will that happen this year? (pic: Nintendo)



Whilst critics drag the Super Mario movie, fans are eagerly predicting that a new game will be announced before the end of the year.



It’s been nearly six years since the last mainline Super Mario game – Super Mario Odyssey – and while you didn’t need Shigeru Miyamoto himself to tell you that a new one is in the works, everyone is naturally curious about when they’ll get to see it.



With the Super Mario Bros. Movie now out in cinemas and surprisingly no video game or DLC tie-in in sight, Miyamoto was recently asked when the next Mario game will arrive.



Miyamoto’s answer was to advise fans to tune into the Nintendo Direct showcases, since that’s where any new Mario game will be revealed, which some have taken to mean Nintendo’s traditional not-E3 event in June.



In a video interview with Variety, when asked about the next Mario game, Miyamoto replied by saying: ‘Well, all I can say is please stay tuned for future Nintendo Directs.’



However, it’s been suggested that this isn’t an entirely accurate translation and his answer is a tad more detailed than that.



This is according to Gematsu’s Sal Romano , who claims that Miyamoto’s full response was: ‘As you know, I can’t make any announcements ahead of time. We usually have Directs once every two-to-three months, so please look forward to one soon enough.’









This has left some fans positing that a new Mario title will be revealed before the end of the year, and probably in June.



Nintendo has traditionally held major Nintendo Directs during the summer as part of E3 season. However, even if E3 2023 hadn’t been cancelled , Nintendo was reportedly skipping the event due to a lack of games , which may point to a muted second half of the year for the company.



Or they could just be being economical with the truth, especially with rumours and speculation pointing to a Nintendo Switch 2 launch either this year or next. In fact, many have guessed that Nintendo is saving the next Mario game for the newer hardware.



It won’t necessarily be Super Mario Odyssey 2 though, or anything similar, as there has for years been rumours of a new Donkey Kong game from the same team, which could easily be what Miyamoto is hinting at.



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For the time being, the Mario movie should be more than enough to placate fans, although it’s getting quite the critical drubbing.



The Los Angeles Times calls it ‘Mildly amusing, swift, noisy and unrelentingly paced,’ and The Telegraph goes so far as to say it’s somehow worse than the 1993 live action movie, describing it as ‘shallow, sterile and eyeball-drillingly inane.’



At the time of writing, it has a score of 54% on Rotten Tomatoes , lower than both Sonic The Hedgehog movies and Detective Pikachu. Although that’s hardly going to matter when the audience score is currently 100%, all but guaranteeing a box office hit and a sequel.









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