What benefits does Nintendo gets releasing the NX a year and a half after announcement?

[Jon-Erich]

Hedra42 said:

Jon-Erich said:

People have to understand. Nintendo had no choice but to announce the codename for their console. I specifically say that because they had already announced their intentions of making a new console the previous year. But yeah, they had to make that announcement. When they announced their mobile plans, If they would have ended on just that, that would have made everyone assume that they were going to abandon the hardware business altogether since Wii U sales are kind of poor. That's the reason NX was announced that same day. By announcing a codename for their supposed next platform, that reassured the public whatever they were working on was far enough in the development stages to be given an actual codename and since Nintendo had intended on staying in the hardware business, that meant that they HAD to continue supporting Wii U for the next several years.

This move may have possibly caused a few people to hold off on getting a Wii U but I think it did reassure even more people that Wii U was going be around for a little while longer because it has to be.

I was going to hit the reply button to say pretty much the same thing.

They had no choice but to announce the NX the day they announced their partnership with DeNA. It was the only way they could reassure people that developing dedicated game systems is still a part of their strategy. A premature announcement of the NX followed by a long silence is probably a compromise between showing the Wii U isn't being cut short and showing they're still going to be in the dedicated game system business.

I'll be the first to say it. It's always a bad idea to announce a new system early. In Nintendo case, they were stuck in a situation where they had two bad choices and they had to choose which choice would be the least devastating. They couldn't hold off on the DeNA announcement since their first set of mobile games are going to be released by the end of the year. I think out of the two choices they had, Nintendo made the correct one. 

Then there's the issue of the NX release date. At this point, Nintendo probably isn't sure when it's coming out. Even if they were, they couldn't make that announcement yet because that would automatically give the Wii U a death date at an early stage in it's life. Announcing a release date next year might be better because Wii U will appear to be much older by then and getting as many sales won't be that much of a priority. Also, if they show off NX next year, but don't have a set date for it's release, that might even be better for Wii U because it would give an impresion of a longer lifespan.