Systems that released too early or too late

[curl-6]

Wman1996 said:

curl-6 said:

While it was still a massive success regardless, Wii could have released a year earlier as it was based on Gamecube hardware anyway and wouldn't have suffered for it, while getting an extra year on the market.

Exactly. GameCube software was starting to dry up a good deal by late 2005 (minus the crossgen Twilight Princess in Holiday 2006) and sales were effectively dead after Q1 2005. 

It's mind boggling that Nintendo made so many of the same mistakes with the N64 and GameCube. Namely the one I'm bringing up now where sales were dead 18 or so months before the successor even launched. 

While the Wii U was dead for a while, I get waiting until March 2017 to launch Switch. 2017 was a banger year for the Switch, after all. If Switch launched any earlier than November 2016, I feel like it would be super rushed. 

Yeah there are times when the hardware may be ready but the software isn't; the first several months of Wii U and 3DS for instance were very dry. 

Switch probably could've launched in 2016, but then it probably wouldn't have had the killer first year lineup it had historically.

Nintendo aside, it feels like Sega's timing was often less than ideal; Megadrive was well timed to take advantage of leapfrogging the NES, but the Saturn and Dreamcast both felt too early.