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Soundwave on 21 May 2023
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killeryoshis said:
Soundwave said:

Furukawa just said though the only reason they even announced the NX was to assure investors/consumers that they were not getting out of the hardware business when announcing their smartphone games. 

The Switch only had a real marketing campaign of 4 months from product reveal to launch. 

3DS/Wii/DS/GameCube are ancient history now, it's clear Nintendo doesn't operate that way anymore. Even with software launches, they barely did any hype building for Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom until very late before release. 

GameCube was announced in May 1999 by the way, released in September 2001, so roughly 2 1/2 years. Nintendo used to announce hardware *3 YEARS* ahead of time in the past, Super NES was announced in 1987 by Mr. Yamauchi, N64 in 1993 (the SNES was barely 2 years old in the US market, lol). Times change. 

With the advent of social media and Youtube, you just don't need one year to launch a product. PS5 and Switch were both basically unveiled and launched in 6 months with plenty of hype for both.

While Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 were revealed the same year they were released. They were announced a year before that.

Microsoft announced Series X as Project Scarlett at E3 2019.
Sony announced PS5 as "Next-generation Hardware" around April 2019. Reaffirmed it in a financial report. So announced =/= revealed. 

The switch was announced in 2015 but revealed in October 2016. 

I expect a new switch announced in 2024. However, I don't see it being revealed until very late 2024 or Early 2025. 

The Switch basically proves that Nintendo doesn't need the time line you're suggesting ... Nintendo only needed 4 months to hype and sell the system. NX was a nothing announcement, they gave no detail on what the system would be or why anyone should be excited about it, it was merely done to prevent people from running news articles that Nintendo was leaving the game business now that they have become a smartphone game publisher. 

Microsoft is really the only one that's done the "we should announce our system a year in advance and start doing hype a year in advance" ... and what's it got them? Distant third place.

When you reveal doesn't matter anymore. I think even 4 months you don't need. You could cut that down to 3 months and be fine. Anyone really think the Switch wouldn't have been successful in their unveiled the system on November 20th, 2016 instead of October 20th? The way social media is today and things like Youtube, it's so different from even the mid-2000s. 

What matters more is once you unveil what your marketing is like from that point on, not so arbitrary dates. Wii U was shown off way earlier than the Switch ... did it help that system at all? No. Because the marketing was ass from day 1.