Nintendo has decided to address the issue of a software shortage. They have been grilled about why more first party titles aren't being released this winter. Gaming press and gamers have long thought that Nintendo is holding back and an official statement confirms that they are.

"For us to provide software titles one after another, one idea is, 'Isn't it possible for Nintendo to stock some of its software titles instead of launching them as soon as the development is completed?'"

He goes on to solidy this idea of holding back titles till it suits the market best saying "Video games need to stay fresh, so it is not practical for us to put them on hold for too long, but we think that some of them may be held for a certain amount of time so that there will be a short interval between when they are completed and when they are launched."

But surely this doesn't mean Nintendo has been holding back on 3DS, I mean the console had one of the worst launch line-ups in console history. The console is in desperate need of software, surely Nintendo would be releasing every title they possibly could right? Wrong

"We are taking on this sort of challenge for the Nintendo 3DS. For example, when we look at the software lineup for the year-end sales season, it is so dense that, if we added any more software, the total sales would not increase. Accordingly, we have intentionally delayed the launch of some software titles to early next year."

He does have a point, if Nintendo did launch say every title they have ready for winter you would likely have Kid Icarus, Animal Crossing and Paper Mario all releasing this winter. Even with all these titles would they push any more hardware? not likely I mean SuperMario3DLand and MarioKart7 are the biggest titles Nintendo could possibly release and they will push the hardware. Additional software will not improve hardware numbers much. Also if Nintendo did release all these games this winter we would suffer another drought early next year, that would damage hardware sales!

We all know what Nintendo is doing is smart, whats your take on their public acknowledgment that they are delaying first party titles?

Source

Realistically, I would expect the difference in time between a game being "completed" and Nintendo releasing it would (probably) be 4 to 6 weeks; and it probably has more to do with preventing game release clumping than anything else

Many publishers delay games for strategic purposes. It's a smart thing to do if done wisely, altough it sucks for fans of those games.

How about better planning. If they did this, they would've had games for the launch of the 3DS, the holidays and for early next year.

The 1983 crash happened because too many bad games were made
The 2011 crash will happen because too many good selling games were made??????

I believe this can reduce competition and not blow the load. Though if this is the case. Then they should be working on their next game and not having free time. Which for some reason I feel that's what they are doing in times like this.

This is really what it comes down to. More of these games should have been planned better to be launched with the 3DS vs now having this big bottleneck around the end of the year. Guess it just means 2012 won't have any droughts.

They can't be cannibalizing their games.

I don't know about this. Right now 3DS is seriously lacking SW, and having more choices for this holiday season can't be too bad. I'm sure there are many people that are waiting for one game in particular and won't get the system this xmas now.

Also, many of these titles are evergreen and will push HW forever anyway, so I don't know if leaving them for later will be so effective.

It's already a very, very well-known and publicized fact that Nintendo didn't have anything much ready for the 3DS's release on purpose. Yes, a mistake, but not one that happened on accident.