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Nintendo announced yesterday that we will be getting a 50 minute Nintendo Direct later today. The show will feature information on “available games like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and games coming to Nintendo Switch in the first half of 2021.” This will be the first Nintendo Direct that isn’t a 3rd party/Indie showcase in almost a year and a half. It is also fair to speculate that we will almost certainly be getting news regarding the 35th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda and the 25th anniversary of Pokémon. The show begins at 5 pm ET and can be found here. We’ll include a full recap of the event in Friday’s newsletter.
Streaming has continued to grow across all major platforms to start 2021. Both Twitch and Facebook Gaming once again surpassed their previous peaks for hours watched last month. Twitch had its biggest month ever in January, recording over two billion hours watched and a 117-percent growth year-over-year. Facebook Gaming saw a similar level of growth for the size of the platform, growing its hours watched by 118 percent year-over-year to 439 million hours watched last month. Cale Michael at Dot Esports has the full story.
Epic Games is taking its fight with Apple around the world! The Fortnite developer and game store platform have been locked in a legal dispute with the tech giant since August of last year in the US. Now Epic Games has taken its fight against Apple to European Union antitrust regulators, escalating its dispute with the iPhone maker over its App Store payment system and control over app downloads. Epic Games’ EU complaint got the thumbs up from lawmaker Rasmus Andresen at the European Parliament which will, in coming months, seek to reinforce EU tech rules proposed by the Commission to rein in U.S. tech giants. Foo Yun Chee at Reuters has the full story.