Nobody said it was easy, but it is possible. This idea that a console must end with two years of weak support for its predecessor to succeed is silly, especially in the case of the Wii where games cheap to make.

No, in Nintendo situation Wii sales already going down meanwhile Sony make a great comeback with their PS3. They had to announce a new system for Wii successor.

It's difficult I think. Even like I said with the Switch, I mean the launch year was great, but again, you take away several repurposed Wii U titles and it's not really anywhere near as impressive of a launch window and probably couldn't even launch at all until Mario Odyssey was ready. The last time Nintendo really, truly had a great all around launch without benefit of taking games from a previous system was really maybe the SNES, almost 30 years ago. 

For Nintendo I think it is simply a better rule of thumb to err on the side of caution and ensure the console to come (whatever it is) always takes priority. 

Gamers are not loyal to you or your friends even your so-called "loyalists" will fuck you hard the second you ask for some patience with a new system. No one ever wants to hear "can you please just give us a few months to get Mario Kart 7 and Mario 3D Land ready and not bail out on us, please?".

There is very little residual bounce or goodwill for past performance when you have a lukewarm or bad launch. 

I mean shit even the Super NES ... Nintendo had a virtual monopoly on the game market and were at peak top of the world in summer/fall 1990 thanks to the unprecedented launch of Super Mario Bros. 3. People even just as blanket term referred to all video games as just "Nintendo" ("little Johnny is playing Nintendo", even if he's playing an arcade game).

Even with Super Mario World and Nintendo promising a new Zelda just a few months later and several other pretty good launch games, Sega from out of fucking nowhere suddenly by holiday 1991 is giving Nintendo a major problem. 12 months earlier Sega couldn't even get stocked by several major US retailers and one damn blue hedgehog and a year+ more mature library and all of the sudden Nintendo's complete dominance of the industry is thrown upside down. 

Hiroshi Yamauchi (president of Nintendo) was so angry that the SNES actually had (relative to expectations) a somewhat lukewarm early period of sales in the US that he went to a Japanese newspaper to publically shame and berate his own son-in-law, NOA president Minoru Arakawa, lol. This lit a fire under Arakawa's ass and Nintendo became much more aggressive towards Sega in the 2nd half of the 16-bit gen. 

It is difficult yes. I think Switch and 3DS is a good example of how to do it; I myself criticized Nintendo in 2017 for not pulling the plug on 3DS completely, but if you were a 3DS owner you got a pretty damn smooth transition into the Switch without your current system being abandoned 2 years early.

Switch launch is mainly predicated on the ashes of the Wii U, remove BOTW, Splatoon 2 (quickly retooled Wii U sequel), and Mario Kart 8 and the launch year window for the Switch is fairly poor. 

It's easy to shit on the Wii U, but I'm also sure the Wii U probably would've had a much easier go of it if you gifted the system Zelda: Skyward Sword as a launch game, a Mario Kart game in its 2nd month on market, and moved the hit game Splatoon from its 3rd year into its first 6 month window that it would've developed significantly more momentum. 

The last launch that Nintendo did that was legit all around good was probably the Super Nintendo, but even there that was in the days when North American/European launches traditionally happened 9-16 months after the Japanese launch. So they were able to have Super Mario World, F-Zero, Pilotwings, Super Ghouls N' Ghosts, Final Fight, and other games ready and just as important "2nd wave titles" like Zelda III and Street Fighter 2 arrived the following spring and summer. 

And people complained that wasn't good enough back then, lol. 

The fact is despite people saying it over and over again, late gen support for a system really does not do anything for a game company in the long term. No one complains or bitches today that the GBA, GameCube, and Wii U were cut short ... why? Because they liked the successors so they have convenient amnesia about those cases.

It's basically: "Fuck you Nintendo, you fucked me on Wii U, where are all the damn games? I'll never buy another sys ... is that Breath of the Wild? On a 6 inch screen? But now on the bus? You had me at Zelda, you brilliant bastards take my $400 because I need neon Joycons to complete my life". 

Always err on the side of the new console's launch being the priority. No one cares about your late gen support for your previous system the second they get a gaming-boner from your new system reveal. But if your new system reveal isn't great or you need a little patience from the consumer .... good fucking luck selling that. All of the sudden you're as popular the guy coughing loudly in a grocery store. 

If you're going to argue they legitimately couldn't have done a better job of the last two years of the Wii, then sorry, I just don't believe that. It was handled horrendously.

This is the list of major Nintendo published software for the Game Boy Advance completed after December 2004 (DS launch in Japan) that had worldwide release outside of the Famicom game re-releases:

Mario Party Advance, Dr. Mario & Puzzle League, Donkey Kong: King Of Swing, Mario Tennis, DKC3 port from Rare. In 2006 the GBA basically got Pokemon Mystery Dungeon and that's all she wrote unless you lived in Japan and got Mother 3. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nintendo_products#Game_Boy_Advance

Is that supposed to be impressive? Not a single one of these games was even developed by any of the main EAD teams, they're all farmed out to studios like Tose and Chunsoft. 

GameCube was much the same story, after 2004, basically all the main EAD teams stopped development for it even though it was only 3 years old. DK: Jungle Beat was completed in December 2004 and then the only GCN title that EAD directly worked on was Zelda: TP which obviously would become a launch title for the Wii. 

The XBox was also cut off and that was even more surprising because 2004 was literally I believe the peak sales year for the XBox (lol). It had widened its gap over the GameCube and was even starting to outsell the PS2 in certain months. That didn't hurt the XBox 360 at all. 

The real truth is Sega is really the only one that suffered from bad repercussions from poor support of systems. And really Sega went to some extreme shit if you actually look at the history there for things to get that bad. 

They stopped Sega CD support largely after 1994, after just 2 years, they killed the 32X in basically six months, and the Saturn we know that story. But even on top of that they never released like a proper new Sonic game on the 32X or Saturn. At least with the Wii U or GameCube you can't complain that you didn't get a new Mario game. 

All 3 of the most successful modern Nintendo systems had predecessors where Nintendo yanked support early, yet Nintendo suffered no real consequence from that. The most successful XBox system is also the same story. To me that shows a pretty definitive trend that late gen console support is vastly overrated. If consumers were so angry they should never have bought the DS after the GBA, they never should've looked twice the Wii after the GameCube, or XBox 360 after the XBox, or Switch after the Wii U. 

Once I could see it being a fluke, but when 4/6 best selling modern systems have the same story, it's hard to ignore. Conversely, both successors for the best selling + best supported platforms (PS2 and DS) had harsh early life cycle struggles in 3DS and PS3. Which goes to show gamers really don't care how much entertainment you've given them in the past when it comes time to decide what they want to play now and in the future. 

You can give them your all, push your dev team to exhaustion, give every possible IP you can, do everything perfect, and guess what? Within 12 months and a new system launch (which must happen eventually) alllllllll that work and goodwill you think you've banked is now worthless the second you make 1 or 2 mistakes or need a few extra months of patience. 

The XBox was having success in 2004, it was starting to open up a larger gap between it and the GameCube and was even starting to outsell the PS2 in certain months for NPD. Halo 2 was THE hottest game of 2004. 2004 was the best year for the system.

But still if the logic is "well if you stop supporting your current system prematurely, consumers will hurt you with your successor system" then it makes no sense that the XBox 360 was a huge hit for Microsoft. XBox is clearly a system that was abruptly ended before the supposed arbritary 5 year rule.

The fact of the matter is the 4 best selling non-Sony hardware systems in the modern era all actually had predacessors with sharply reduced product cycles.

And allllllll the great work Sony and Nintendo did with the PS2 and DS bought them dick squat when it came to the PS3 and 3DS early on. If this was logical conclusion, the PS3 and 3DS should have gotten positive bounces from having well supported predacessors whereas the systems like the Switch and XBox 360 should have struggled, but we see very clearly the opposite is true.

Consumers don't give a shit what you did for them even 12 months prior the moment the new product cycle begins. You get no loyalty whatsoever, just like a sports team that wins a championship, the other teams aren't kissing your ass anymore the moment the next season starts they are coming to beat you.

Unless you are being straight up moronic like Sega was where they killed off no less than basically 3 consecutive hardware releases in under 2 1/2 years (one not even being supported for 6 months) what you do in the previous generation, specifically late generation support, really has little/no bearing on your next system. Lucky for Nintendo actually because they would be fucked hard if it did. 

Nintendo have no less than 3/5 of their hardware systems prior to Switch that didn't get a proper 5 years of software support (forget 6 years LOL). GameCube's late 2005 and 2006 are terrible. Game Boy Advance's 2006 is terrible. Wii U's 2016, lol. Yet had no bearing on the DS, Wii, or Switch. If anything, lol, it seems to be the pattern of every system that releases after they cut one short prematurely ends up selling very well. The one system they supported well for many years (DS) is also the one of the two that gave them the most problems in terms of its successor. 

Either abrupt ends and poor late gen support in years 5/6 have a bearing on successive console systems or it doesn't, you can't have it both ways. This is one of those things that's borne out of "well this happened to Sega 20-30 years ago, so it must mean it also applies to every other console manufacturer" when really the more accurate truth is Sega is the outlier here. 

And even in Sega's case it doesn't really work every time. The Sega Master System was also abruptly ended (1986-1989 only) so how is it possible that the Sega Genesis was able to be a large success? Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sega all of their best selling systems are following a system that was replaced at the 3-year mark ironically .... (Master System, GBA, and og XBox). That should be impossible. 

The fact is none of the GBA, GCN, or Wii U got satisfying 5 year support cycles yet all of their successors had tremendous success. 

You can't argue that point because it's a fact. 

You can't argue the point that the most successful XBox system also succeeded the original XBox that was replaced on market after only 3 years. 

That's not an opinion that's fact. 

Even same thing for the Sega Genesis really. The Master System released in 1986 and was replaced just three years later by the Genesis which is by a country mile Sega's most successful platform.

I'm not seeing any corrleation here between short product cycles and a large impact on the successor, if that's a fact this shouldn't be the case. 

The GBA "had great support" for 2005 and 2006 is also a very dubious statement ... if Nintendo released a Switch 2 in fall 2020 (3 1/2 years just like GBA got) but said "don't worry guys we'll still make an enhanced version of Pokemon Sword/Shield (not even a full new game) and one Fire Emblem for the OG Switch and then a small handful of farmed out titles for 2021 and then dick all for 2022" I'm sure Rol would shit a literal brick, but apparently for GBA that constitutes "great support", lol. 

Transitions are far, far, far, far, FAR (did I mention FAR?) more important than late gen support basically. 

No one gives a shit what your previous system's late gen was like if your next system does great, particularly if it has a great launch. 

The 1st year of a new console is really actually 90% of where a game exec should be earning their money for. That's what makes or breaks a company in many cases and that should always take way higher priority than "yeah but what did you do for year 5/6 of your previous console".

In virtually all modern hardware you can tell by the system's 1st anniversary whether or not the system is going to have a good life cycle, a bad one, or an up/down one. 

Even the DS, which had somewhat sluggish first 4-5 months, by Nov/Dec 2005 (its first birthday) you could clearly see the where the system was going. Killing the GBA off was a good call.

If you're really actually a fan of any of these console brands anyway, bitching and moaning about that is stupid. What are you crying about you know you are going to buy the next system whatever it is no matter what because you can't play future franchise installments anywhere else. 

Being stuck with the GBA until 2006 is not a good thing, and that's not anything specific even to just GBA/DS, that goes for any hardware. There's no hardware transition where the games didn't get better due to better technology. There's no one here who would rather play Zelda III on the NES instead of the SNES, or Mario 64 on a SNES Super FX chip (holy fuck would that be terrible), or Metroid Prime on an N64 (ugh), or Splatoon on the Wii, etc. etc. etc.  

So people arguing so hard to have more games on inferior hardware is always a bit of a laugh because they're essentially arguing for shittier games. Even if the Wii U was filled to the brim with dumb design decisions on Nintendo's part, there's no Wii U game that would be better off on the Wii, not NSMBU, not DKC: TF, not Splatoon, not Mario Kart 8, not Pikmin 3.