Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

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The Nintendo NX Seems Like It's On Track For A Delay

Nintendo has been in the news a lot lately, between their continued connection to Pokémon GO, and now their new relationship with Apple, which is bringing Mario to iOS.

But they have not been in the news for something that fans have been waiting over a year for, giving out information about their next video game console, the Nintendo NX. Last year, Nintendo puzzled many by saying that they would not share any information about the console until 2016, yet it did not appear at E3 of this year, nor anywhere else.

Now, we’re nine months into 2016, and the only information we’ve gotten out of Nintendo officially is a release date, March 2017, something that is looking less and less likely every time this issue comes up.

We are now approaching a point where a March 2017 release just does not seem wise or likely. Assuming that the NX is released at the end of March, before Nintendo’s fiscal year ends, that’s just about six and a half months from today.

Now, many will say that other consoles have been announced and released within the same year, most recently the PS4 and Xbox One. But there are stark differences in the situations which makes the comparison flawed.

While the Xbox One was officially announced six months before release, the PlayStation 4 was announced nine months ahead of time. But both consoles had the benefit of not only their own heavily-promoted live events to debut, but also blowout E3 shows that really dove deep into each system, and blasted hype (or a lack thereof, in Microsoft’s case) throughout the world.

It’s widely speculated that Nintendo will debut the NX in one of its famous Directs, a video presentation, and a March release would mean there would be no huge gaming shows like E3 to further show of the unit live. Nintendo has already been confirmed to be skipping the Tokyo Games Show, which is about to start and might have been a reasonable place to debut the NX, so that means the entirety of the messaging for the NX will have to be conveyed through Directs between now and release, or at best, Nintendo possibly setting up their own independent live event.

And then there’s the matter of a March release historically. No home video game console since the Japanese release of the PS2 has debuted outside of the fall holiday window, including Nintendo’s own consoles. While Nintendo’s alleged goal is to get the NX out before their fiscal year ends, it seems more than a little likely that once upon a time, their goal was probably to get it out for holiday 2016 which also would have been inside the fiscal year. It seems probable that an internal delay prevented that, even if the March date was the first “official” date.

That’s another thing. This is what Nintendo does. They delay things. They delay games all the time, from the years-long pushback of Breath of the Wild, to most recently announcing that its mobile versions of Fire Emblem and Animal Crossing were being pushed to 2017. It’s Shigeru Miyamoto who has the famous quote about how “a delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is bad forever,” and that philosophy probably applies to hardware as well. But with the Wii U essentially dead at this point, it’s unclear Nintendo wants to wait longer than they have to in order to replace it, hence this fiscal year goal.

They may have bought themselves more time with investors, however. Pokémon GO made their stock soar, even if it came down a bit after many realized they were only getting a sliver of revenue from the game. And their stock jumped yet again when they revealed their mobile plans at Apple’s event. If investors are confident enough in their mobile-themed future, perhaps that buys them more leeway for a pending NX delay, out of the fiscal year. Super Mario Run, out this December, could theoretically be another GO-sized hit, but this time it would be Nintendo raking in the cash, rather than having it split between multiple companies.

Right now, simply nothing about a March 2017 release date for the NX makes sense. Unless the NX is announced within the next week or two, it seems almost predetermined that the date will be moved, something I guessed might happen from the moment I heard it announced. We simply know too little about the NX too close to an alleged release, and with no big shows on the horizon, a few Nintendo Directs and some YouTube trailers aren’t going to be enough to generate the sort of hype the console needs for a proper launch.

I’m actually fairly hopeful about the NX, but that’s only been going off rumors and leaks, given that Nintendo themselves hasn’t given out even a morsel of information about the console, despite promising to almost a year ago now. A portable console combining home and handheld divisions, paired with a renewed focus on mobile seems like a good path forward for them. But this rollout, or lack thereof, is starting to get downright strange, and this March 2017 release date either seems impossible, or like a very bad idea.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2016/09/13/the-nintend...