So we know its launching globally March 2017.

Which is not typical for home consoles, usually they launch before the holidays and make use of the "brand new hot thingy" and the massive amounts people spend on holidays to get off to a flying start sales wise.

NX is launching right after.... when people have already used their hard earned $ on christmas presents.

Home consoles resently get revealed at E3.

Its just how it goes, is the single biggest week for gameing in the year. Lots of press around, so its a good time to get your message out there. News gets picked up and suddenly its all over the web. Basically free marketing.

Nintendo wont have NX at E3, or talk about it at E3.

Then theres the Wii U. Lets be honest its not going out on a good note.

It could potentially make buyers more hesitant to get a NX right out the gate.

What do you guys think?

The question is: why the delay? Every piece of info we had pointed to a holydays 2016 release, but they moved it to march 2017. Nintendo just abandoned its best period of time to sell a console, and basically left the WiiU abandoned. Was the NX not ready hardware or software-wise? Did the PS4K and PSVR scared Nintendo? Did they want to give WiiU owners the feeling (keyword here being feeling) of full 5 years of support?What was it?

Could be several things, yield issues with AMD's 14nm chips could be a big problem. Can't ship a system without its GPU. Not having enough software is always a problem for Nintendo and if they were having so much trouble getting PS3/360 level games finished on time ... would it really be a shocker that they'd suffer a delay making a jump to PS4/XB1 level graphics perhaps? 

That is the question right? Truth is it doesnt matter why. Its going to effect it sales wise.

I just hope they had a really good reason for it.

It was always going to have somewhat of a bad start hampered by the disaster of the Wii U.

There's going to be a lot of skepticism towards NX, and launching in March doesn't really help, but I doubt they had a choice.

Nah. Plenty of tech release in Spring to good sales. What's cool about this is Nintendo is basically sticking it to E3 and will likely have their own venue instead. I guess they could also have a direct since it's supposed to be changing format this year, and this may be what that is for. Maybe the change in format is that it's live. Who knows.

They aren't showing NX at E3 so it's a hardware related reason.

They're definitely off to a horrible start, but it's definitely not destined to flop just yet.

It can't be off to a bad start if it's not even out yet.

I don't think March is a terrible time to launch. It all depends on how Nintendo markets it leading up to launch.

I don't understand why most people (who shout out on the net) are upset about the date.

Nintendo avoids or might avoid:
- rushing the thing to be ready in time for Christmas
- lots of people being disappointed with a weak launch line-up/first 6 months because games aren't ready
- an insanely huge first day system update
- too many users signing in during the first few days of the NX and the new online network making it crash and people being upset
and hasn't talked about the NX at all so people don't know anything about it, there wasn't even a date before.

This is all clever to me, especially when they can slowly build it up for a proper Christmas 2017.
This is very Nintendo-like actually, I wish more companies would think and act like that and not only look at what's best for the quick money. In the end, customers need to be satisfied and a smooth image is worth more than a quick cash-in. It just baffles me how the world actually seems to want companies to be assholes and rush an unfinished product to the market with a ton of flaws and resulting effects when it's just about a 3 months wait for something they didn't even know when it was coming in the first place. Hardware and sofware always needs to be tested and pushed out slowly. It doesn't work well with a sudden userbase of millions of people during the first week. Slow and steady for a steady system. I hate all of my current consoles for not being steady at all and will love the NX just for that if Nintendo is intending what I believe.

The 3ds had a very slow start, that was launched in spring also, It wasn't till it got a substantial Price Drop that christmas it started to take off. The NX could turn its sales around as well in a similar way however after the WiiU if the NX gets off to a slow start it might not take long at all for 3rd parties to once again abandon Nintendo's new system.

But what the actual system is has a big effect on this.

I'm gonna say slow start, but the sales will pickup later in the year, hopefully the 3rd parties won't jump ship before 6 months are up, I think they'll stick with it assuming the hardware is good.