Why do Nintendo consoles always release late?

[NoirSon]

NightDragon83 said:

NoirSon said:
A few reasons, primarily Nintendo HATES to kill off a system before they have bleed it dry or gotten all potential software released on it. The last SNES game Nintendo published in Japan was in 1999, if they don't have to, Nintendo would not release new hardware for over a decade. See the original Game Boy, it took the combined threats of Neo Geo Pocket, two or three versions of Wonder Swan and a few other would be competitors to force Nintendo to release more modern hardware incrementally until they hit GBA. Heck, if there was no PSP or Vita, we probably wouldn't have seen the DS or 3DS at least until a few years later when cell phone gaming started to become a issue.

Personally, the GC wasn't released late, it arrived the same year as the Xbox if I remember right which was a year after the PS2. While the N64 was struggling in some areas, it was still profitable enough to survive in NA and had decent 3rd party support even in its last year. The Wii was probably a matter of them getting the technology just right and at the right price but the GC was released at the perfect time, Nintendo just chose the wrong software medium like they did with the N64.

O'rly???  Tell that to the Wii... from 2010-2012, it only received TWO notable 1st party games, DKC Returns and Skyward Sword.  Nintendo essentially allowed the Wii to starve to death during its last 2 years in the market prior to the Wii U's release, which cost them a ton of momentum as the casuals started flocking to Kintect, and the Wii, which dominated in sales for most of this past gen, ended up limping to the finish like while sales of the 360 and especially PS3 remained strong throughout and allowed both companies to gain momentum going into next-gen.

They did leave the Wii out to dry especially in NA and Europe.

Nintendo published a good steam of games in Japan including fairly high profile releases of The Last Story, Pandora's Tower and a few Japanese casual games, while dangling Dragon Quest X before Square Enix revealed it was a MMORPG. But their is no doubt whoever was controlling the game out put on what came to the Western side of the world was a moron that would rather gamble on Fortune Street (Monopoly + Mario + Dragon Quest) then either Western produced software or their more traditional software made in Japan. It took a campaign and probably Nintendo of Europe doing most of the work to get Xenoblade released in NA and them to let a 3rd party to release both Last Story and Pandora's Tower. One would hope that Nintendo of America now under Iwata's directly will be better with scheduling releases on more then just their handhelds but time will tell.

But that seems to be more attuned to Nintendo's arrogance that they could survive via casual games and the dwindling 3rd party support they were getting at the time rather then them NOT trying to bleed the Wii dry. If they didn't try they would have dropped the Wii U much earlier which probably would have been to their benefit.