Monolith Soft, best known recently for the Xenoblade games, has been rumored to be cooking up a new Nintendo exclusive for a while now, with little by way of concrete information. Now, the developer’s official website posted a downtime notice for maintenance on the 8th of September.
A few things align here - the date is a Tuesday, the typical day on which Nintendo Direct broadcasts are streamed, and a September Direct is all but guaranteed. The Monolith Soft site has almost never gone down for maintenance, but possibly a major facelift for promotional material regarding a new game would warrant it. Additionally, rumors and leaks have predicted the development and eventual announcement of a Xenoblade 3. Renowned Nintendo informant markomaro also posted about the upcoming broadcast, naming September 8 as the date to mark in your calendars. They too mention Monolith Soft’s next big project as being one of the main focuses of the broadcast, but does not clarify whether it is a Xenoblade title.
— markomaro (@Newmarkomaro) September 1, 2021 Apparently various third party releases and collaborations will also be showcased. Rumors about a landmark collaboration with Microsoft have been swirling for months now. As Sony and Microsoft have gradually broken down barriers between one another throughout this console generation, roping in Nintendo with cross promotions, crossplay or porting key first-party titles would be the last great step in ending the age of the ‘console wars’ entirely. On its own, the maintenance notice on Monolith Soft’s site would have been too little to go on. However, paired with the information markomaro seems to have, alongside the various circumstantial pieces of evidence, the odds are looking pretty good. With Monolith Soft’s major project being the biggest prediction, and hopes rise of previous rumors of Game Boy ports, this upcoming broadcast is definitely going to be a huge one - either a success, or a disappointment - whenever it does happen.
