The first ever Nintendo Direct was streamed online in 2011 and forever changed how Nintendo would communicate with its fans. Now new Nintendo announcements are generally expected to be included in one of the company's regular Directs, be it game reveals or a deep dive into an upcoming release. Due to the runaway success of the Nintendo Direct model, other gaming companies have since began adopting similar methods of communication with their followers. The latest of these is Humble Bundle, who have announced the debut of their "Humble Brag" series, as their Direct-equivalents are to be called.
Humble Bundle originally launched as a method of raising funds for various charities by offering game bundles with a pay-what-you-want pricing model, ultimately allowing participants to own the included games for far less than buying them individually. Since then the company has expanded to not only oftentimes offer multiple bundle deals at once, but also launch a monthly game subscription model and even function as a publishing company for new releases.
So far details on the first Humble Brag video are scant, beyond the promise of revealing what's upcoming from the company's publishing wing. This suggests that the focus of each Humble Brag is to be on new indie titles published by the company. Past Humble Publishing titles include A Hat In Time, Slay the Spire and Temtem, so the potential for notable game announcements within each video announcement is considerable. That said, future Humble Brag videos could very well focus on future bundles and other goings-on with Humble Bundle.
Since the advent of Nintendo Directs, competitors Sony and Microsoft have also launched their own series of announcement videos. Microsoft first began airing its Inside Xbox series of videos in 2018, while Sony joined in with its State of Play announcements just last year. Though Humble Bundle doesn't quite function the same way as these three console giants, it's nonetheless become a leading platform for indie releases, and its announcement videos could serve a similar function for the independent gaming world.
The first of these will be premiering on the Humble Bundle YouTube channel on March 24th at 9am.
Source: Destructoid