There have been 6 Smash Directs, if we include the 25-minute Smash Ultimate E3 presentation as a full Direct. (It was certainly treated like one)
Smash 4 also included a 10 minute highlight at E3 2014 (introducing Miis, customs, and revealing Palutena), while Smash Ultimate instead included a lot of focus at Treehouse Live 2018. (For example, this took the place of summaries for Ridley, Moray Towers, and Great Plateau Tower)
What can we learn from Smash 4's Directs? Namely, they included:
Additionally, here are some average times for covering topics in past Directs:
Without further ado, here is a chart breaking down the contents of all previous Directs, including a projection for the final third of Smash Ultimate content:
Some notes:
- 2 for Smash 4
- 2 for Smash 4 DLC
- 2 for Smash Ultimate (so far)
Smash 4 also included a 10 minute highlight at E3 2014 (introducing Miis, customs, and revealing Palutena), while Smash Ultimate instead included a lot of focus at Treehouse Live 2018. (For example, this took the place of summaries for Ridley, Moray Towers, and Great Plateau Tower)
What can we learn from Smash 4's Directs? Namely, they included:
- 2-3 minutes each for the new major modes (Smash Run/Tour)
- 1 minute for Stage Builder
- 9 minutes total for all other single-player modes, including collectible features like Trophies
- 6 minutes total for all online-specific modes, content, functionality, and features
Additionally, here are some average times for covering topics in past Directs:
- ~130 seconds for the average New Character Trailer
- ~150 seconds for the average New Character Gameplay Summary that follows
- ~50 seconds for the average new highlighted stage
Without further ado, here is a chart breaking down the contents of all previous Directs, including a projection for the final third of Smash Ultimate content:
Some notes:
- While Simon had an abnormally long trailer and abnormally short character summary (surely due to Ritcher), I've used average times for the opening character of this Direct instead. (It so happens to be the same total duration.)
- The biggest guess that is probably wrong is my very conservative estimate for DLC Preview announcements. I based the estimate you see off Mewtwo's, which was very brief--and I think most of us are expecting a more robust plan out of the gate for this title. I could see this taking much more time.
- Obviously the orders of the 4 big chunks are arbitrary. I fully expect them, especially one-player content, to be split up and mixed throughout the presentation. (Trying to predict the exact order of that is pointless.)
- I'm assuming Bosses get a lot of screen time, but are included in the Special Mode (and other single-player) coverage.
- There's probably some misc. crazy stuff that we can't guess, but if it doesn't fit into any of these categories, I'm sure it can be weaseled in somewhere. All my overall timings err on the conservative side.