State of Play - Oct 27 (3rd party updates + a few reveals; 20 mins)

[DonFerrari]

Dulfite said:

Zippy6 said:

I get your point that yes Nintendo do launch several games within 9 months of announcement, however think about what those games are. They are not major blockbuster titles with huge budgets and long development times. Titles like Smash Bros and BOTW are announced long in advance just like the other companies.

Games like Horizon and Breath of the Wild will never be announced that close to release. There are exceptions, Super Mario Odyssey, Miles Morales, Demon's Souls. But for games that take a long time to develop it's expected that the time between announcement and release is high for all companies.

So the only reason the announcement schedule seems different is that Nintendo continues to create titles of varying budget and time investment such as your Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, Pokemon Snap, while sony invests almost entirely in games that take a lot of money and a long time to make.

I'm not disputing that Sony spends a lot more money on game development than Nintendo. I'm disputing why they (and many other companies, including third party ones that release on Nintendo devices) feel they have to market games years before they release. If they announced Spiderman 3 and released it in two months, it would still sell tens of millions of copies. Same thing with Final Fantasy 7. You don't need 2-5 years of marketing, especially if you anticipate delays. Announced it 9 months (or less) out. In the meantime, just tell people you are working on something. Then no one gets prematurely hyped up and disappointed by how long it takes.

To make you invest on buying the HW.