Spring hasn't been kind to video games launches. Sega Saturn was the last console to try launching in spring. 

3DS was the last portable. 

Both launches went sour very quickly. 

It's not the opitmal time, but if Nintendo can't make holiday 2016, then it is what it is. No sense in burning an entire half fiscal year by waiting until holiday 2017 for the next bus to come, you may as well start walking. 

Knowing Nintendo they probably badly want Dragon Quest XI on day 1 too ... so that might have factored into the unusual release date, waiting too long maybe would've given Sony an unintended exclusivity window on the game for no reason if we assume that the game is say a spring 2016 release. 

It's off to a bad start interest/hype-wise, I mean not showing up at E3 certainly wont help.

March isn't terrible, just inferior to November.

This!

I don't believe that the destiny of the NX depends on the release date. It depends on what the NX is and how many people it appeals to. If Nintendo manages to convince people that they need NX it will sell well, if they don't it will fail. No matter if they release it for holiday 2016 or in march.

If there will be a unified library for NX, Nintendo will have a badass lineup ready by holiday 2017. Then a new AAA franchise title and a first price drop... boom!

We can't talk about the sales now because we still don't know what NX is.
But as of now I don't expect a big opening since it is not a holiday release.

March 2017 or march isn't an issue - maybe it was never going to be ready for Xmas 2016 - we have no idea of games and support yet. March means 7/8 months away from holidays.

So Zelda - Animal Crossing and a few more should fill the gap until then.

Obviously Mario 3D will e ready for that holiday as well as A new Metroid Game.

The answer to why March could pretty well be software and hardware.

Software:

Even if they moved their unannounced games to the NX they still need to be finished and upgraded to the new console which takes time. For the 3DS and Wii U one of the biggest complaints the first year was there was "no" software after the initial push. And while this is the first time Nintendo has done a global launch in the spring, its not the first time they launched early

Hardware:

Up to the launch of the 3DS and Wii U things look like they were going well in production then they hit production snags after the launch for the gamepad. The extra time is probably to make sure they can have enough units to launch globally with out supply problems.

As for past consoles that launched in the Spring the PS2 comes to mind. They launched in the spring in Japan without any problems sales wise.

As for not showing at E3 that will not be that much of a problem. They are showing off Zelda which will be a launch games, even though they will be showing the Wii U version, plus they can have a reveal in August/September in the time frame of Gamescom and TGS, making the announcment closer to the release date and means they don't have to fight for as much for attention admist items that are being announced for the winter sales period.

It's simple: If Nintendo was confident about the console and its line-up they would launch during the holidays. A March launch says they're scared of the competition and limits it to the hardcore Nintendo fanbase (who'd buy it any time of the year) as the mainstream would've spent their money months prior.

Skipping holiday suggests to me they're not going all in, thing won't even be at E3. Sounds like really bad news.

I wouldn't really read too much into that. 

I think they might not want to show at E3 because it gives their competetion too much time (almost 9 months) to prep/prepare potentially copy certain ideas too ... depending on what they got. 

I mean I predict a lot but honestly it's hard to know with Nintendo. If they have some kind of new fangled concept that is a killer idea, if I was running Nintendo I would probably wait until Nov/December to unveil, as much it might infuriate game fans on the message boards, they forget about all that stuff the moment you start showing games anyway. 

I've followed Nintendo for a long time, the last time they were this secretive/hush-hush about something it turned out the Wiimote which had little bit of market success. Not saying that will happen again, but it's not impossible with the type of company Nintendo is. 

I suspect manufacturing/fab problems are the real reason for the delay into 2017 ... Nintendo likely wet themselves when AMD demoed their 14nm Arctic Islands/Polaris tech for them because they are suckers for lower wattage consumption. They were never going to release some 28nm 150 watt monstrosity, it's just not their style, but fabbing complex 14nm GPUs is still a dicey proposition for fall 2016, I suspect this is likely one reason for the delay. 

PS4Neo is launching this holiday so there's nothing they could copy. But yeah, there's nothing for Sony to copy from Nintendo, PS4Neo is a new PS4 while NX is a new system. Sony is the industry leader again, whatever the 3rd place company is coming up with has to be groundbreaking for Sony to even consider them as rivals, let alone copy their ideas.

Launching in March isn't going to affect them negatively. Some of you people talk about this as if it would only sell during its first holiday season and not much ever after... -___-


By launching in march, they sell to the hardcore fans and enthusiasts first, as it would sell mostly to them anyways no matter when it would launch during the year. But by its first holiday, the console will have started to build an actual library of games making it more tempting than during its launch with what limited catalogue will be ready at that time, again, as is always the case. It also gives developers more time to get their big games ready for the "upcoming holiday season", and they will release them knowing that the console has already built a minimum of a user base...

Anyway, I don't see any issues with Nintendo releasing their console during march, or whenever else.