I just know 2 things for certain on why they are doing this.

1, to annoy me(shakes hand in general direction of nintendo hq)
2, what Iwata said.

It is an obvious and not very interesting approach. I think Nintendo knows what they are doing and how to market a console. What I truly love about what I read, however, was how humble Iwata seems to be. I like when a leader is direct and honest, yet humble in mannerisms. This is a good look for the company as a whole.

This is a good thing as a lot of people are cash strapped at the minute and it keeps a steady flow of games coming each month :)

I see it as a wise decision considering you posted an article earlier complaining about the holiday season being stacked with too many releases. Even though Spring and Summer are usually the slow months they need to have something released each few months to keep the momentum going.

I said that on gonintendo. They had possibly delayed need for speed to spread the games out because of something that happened with vita. And I know ea is publishing the game but the manufacturer can request they delay the game.

Pikmin 3 likely could be ready for launch itself given how long it has been in development.

This has been Nintendo's M.O. for years now... spread out big releases, especially first party titles, in order to maximize sales. Why do you think Brawl got delayed from holiday '07 to Q1 '08 for example? They didn't want it going head to head with Mario Galaxy during the holidays. They also held Wind Waker back to a March '03 release so it wouldn't compete with Metroid Prime and Mario Sunshine during the 2002 holidays on the GC.

This is why Pikmin 3 is not a launch title. You've got both Nintendo Land and NSMBU launching with the system, and Nintendo knows that the vast majority of Wii U buyers are going to pick one or both of these up. And let's be honest, if Pikmin 3 was available at launch, 3rd party sales would suffer tremendously because all people would be buying are those three Nintendo games. Then when 3rd parties don't support the system as strongly citing low software sales as the reason, everyone will complain that 3rd parties just hate Nintendo.

Fully agree. Heck just look at Vita's launch. It was excellent yet that didn't really help the system. Early adopters will buy a console regardless of the games so it makes a lot more sense to spread them out.

Given the drought of Wii titles, I really can't see how otherwise would be the case.

I mean, Nintendo must have been doing something during all this time :P

why would nintendo do that

To keep interest in the platform sustained, and because they're the only ones putting games on the platform that are worth a damn.