So what will Nintendo have for 2H 2010?

[jarrod]

Demotruk said:

Roma said:

well demotruk if the games aren't ready then they can't release them so what would you prefer unready games or good games that are ready to be out?

Better planning. Delays are a fact of life in the games industry, good planning takes these things into account and should manage a steady stream of releases even without them all arriving on schedule. I'm sure they also thought they'd have better third party support in late 08 and 09, they probably also thought Wii Music and Animal Crossing wouldn't flop, but they didn't have much prepared for the possiblility that they did.

From Iwata's interviews, it seems Wii Sports Resort was originally planned to be a Q4 2008 game, but got delayed.  Miyamoto also mentioned that Galaxy 2 could've launched fall 2009, but was delayed for strategic reasons (giving NSMBW a wide birth).  Smash Brawl was supposed to be Q4 2007, but adding the netcode delayed it.  I'm sure there's other examples, I think someone said (Tezuka?) that Galaxy 1 was originally planned to be a launch game?  Same for Prime 3?

I'd say it's pretty clear 2H 2008/1H 2009 were flubbed (the critically panned Wii Music and warmed over Animal Crossing port weren't ever going to hold the fort), but I'd say Nintendo's more than recovered from that now (2H 2009 was exceptionally strong for casuals, 1H 2010 is exceptionally strong for cores).