Oh, I get that.
If I had to pick a release date right now, gun to my head, I'm picking Tears of the Kingdom simultaneous launch, same as most everyone else. I'm just not super confident about it.
The puzzle pieces, as I see them:
Drake is a big ass chip, custom built for Nintendo, that has likely hit production. Nintendo seems to be stockpiling parts, and their explanation for why doesn't seem to add up. Nintendo has been relatively cagey about 2023, and there are some open slots in the spring. We've heard that 3rd parties are expecting and H1 2023 release window for exclusives. That feels like a Spring release to me.
However, around the time of the Nvidia leak, when Fall was still on the table there was a vocal minority who saw the sheer
size of Drake, and 2023 as the 6 year mark and opined that this felt like a successor, not just in specs, but in timing. They argued that Nintendo would get past 2022 holiday, spend 2023 marketing the thing, and launch holiday 2023? "Switch 2, the next console, backwards compatible" is a simple, clear marketing campaign that happens to match the hardware really well.
The open dates in spring? Well, March got filled at the TGAs, and can you blame Nintendo for clearing the decks before Zelda comes out?
The stockpiling? Take Nintendo (mostly) at their word. They're stockpiling because of the supply chain, and the effect is increased by a change in accounting practice. Yes, they are stockpiling for Drake, but if they announce before the end of the fiscal, the investors aren't going to be up in arms about hearing that Nintendo has very carefully built out its resources to have plenty of units at launch.
The H1 launch date for games? That is where it starts to fall apart, but it's not insane to me that, in the last year since we heard that info, the schedule might have slipped 6 months. Exclusives get pushed back (they're not announced, so it's not like it hurts their marketing) and cross-gen/multi-plat titles launch on time with an enhanced edition later.
So, two competing theories.
Either we believe this launches in spring, and that:
- Nintendo is releasing 6x times more powerful hardware with a marketing cycle roughly the length of the new 3DS
- They're going to treat it as some kind of revision, hamstringing the hardware's potential in the short term
- While potentially recommitting the Wii U sin of making people feel like this is an optional upgrade for just a few specific games
Or we believe that they're releasing a pretty straight forward Switch 2, with a Switch 2 marketing cycle and:
- And that all the reports from multiple sources about 2022-2023 were wrong and/or misinterpreted
- And the fact that the hardware seems to be lining up for production is just coincidence
- Nintendo has gone full doomsday prepper in shoring up their production lines
If I had to pick, again, gun to my head, I'll go with the theory that says "yeah, all these reports are true, you're just missing the one piece of data that makes Nintendo's audacious strategy make sense once it is deployed" because that's how the NX/Switch and the Wii both went down. But my natural self-doubt makes "Yeah, you're not Sherlock Holmes, and the one missing piece of data isn't Nintendo's genius marketing plan, but a totally banal explanation for why one of the things you've been leaning on is wrong/misinterpreted" also kinda compelling.
If you were asking in spring of last year "what if folks are mixing up a new hardware revision that is coming out with the successor and that's why it looks like a pro is coming out" you'd probably get laughed at, but it happened, and in retrospect, wasn't that wild. I'm open to the possibility that's going on here.
