General

While I agree that Indie World Showcases are the biggest shows consistently released specifically for indie titles, they're often lucky to break the 1 million views mark. They're nowhere near big enough to actually expand the audience for Silksong.  Even in lieu of a Direct proper, for something like Silksong, I could see Nintendo coming up with any excuse to have a Partner Showcase and feature the title – I just think it would be going backwards to go from the first game shadow dropping during Nintendo's E3 Direct to an April Indie World Showcase that draws a fraction of the crowd. Heck, I'm sure that Nintendo not turning up with a Direct proper in 2022 is a big reason why it turned up at the Xbox Games Showcase instead.  But, for the reasons I said above, I don't think an Xbox Games Showcase would be suitable for this game to shadow drop - they pull in a pretty niche slice of the gaming crowd, all things considered (and the thing being considered is that it's mostly Xbox fans, the smallest traditional platform to release on currently). Summer Game Fest would be absolutely suitable for this and draws in crowds from every platform, it would probably be the best event in terms of sheer eyes-on volume for this to drop during.  But, checking the release schedule, I reckon that if we get a shadow drop or release date within the next month for Silksong, it'll be because of Shadow of the Erdtree launching 21st June. If Silksong is complete and ready to go, as the recent ratings would seem to suggest, I can easily imagine a scenario where they were waiting to shadow drop it at Xbox or SGF, learned of the Shadow of the Erdtree release date, and spotted that mid-April is pretty open by comparison. I think, at least in the diehard gaming crowd which has been fawning over Silksong updates for ages now, the overlap with the From crowd is pretty huge, and a lot of Hollow Knight's success overall is down to smart release timing and plenty of word of mouth to spread the word about the game.  That'd be my guess anyways. Not saying it wouldn't be smart to drop tomorrow, there are just objectively bigger events coming up, and Shadow of the Erdtree is the only genuine reason I can think of wanting to avoid a mid-June release and deciding to just drop on a random Wednesday in April instead. 

Stream with the latest updates dropping next Monday (22nd April) at 23:00 BST.  UK inclusion confirmed?!?!?!?!?! Is this game the ultimate British Empire power fantasy?!?!?!?!?!?!?! Will there be tea and colonies?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!  Will the Queen somehow return?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!   (okay but seriously a joke in this game about the difference between the United Kingdom vs Great Britain would be great)

Indie World is the biggest and highest profile regular indie event that we currently have (across all platforms).  With E3 being gone, I can't see any better opportunity we have for an indie game announcement like a Silksong trailer/release date. Only thing potentially bigger than an Indie World is a proper mainline Nintendo Direct; and we're not due another one until September now. The Triple III initiative has promise if it carries on being as good as their inaugural event, but right now, Indie World is the best we have. 

The years are flying by because I 1000% thought that we'd had a Mina update and new footage more recently than Silksong, but nope, latest stuff I can find is still Q1 2022 for Mina (mostly stuff shortly after that Yacht Club presentation with the game's KS announcement) and June 2022 for Silksong during the Xbox Games Showcase.  Some serious mind fudgery going on here. Let's get updates on both! Okay maybe that's a bit much to ask for but eh, why not  It definitely feels that way for me, I feel like a Direct would make the most sense for a shadow drop if it were going to happen, absolutely got the most eyes on them during those. Indie Showcases do middling numbers by comparison. There's no chance in hell in my mind that it drops during an Xbox event (even with Game Pass deals and the like) simply because of how poorly it would get communicated that it was dropping on everything. I mean Xbox buy a couple of days of Atlus saying their games are coming to Xbox only in their trailers, for pity's sake!  Wdym, we get so many fantasy farming sim indies shadow drop all of the time, there's no way Silksong is bigger than those

Game's out now on the eShop. Let the slap fights begin!