I don’t disagree with you necessarily on a lot of this, but how relevant is May to Saturn’s failure, and is it relevant today?
It's less that May is bad in and of itself and more that it's not as good as the alternatives. I'm still working on the assumption of early 2023, which May is a stretch, but let's work with H1, January to May. January and February are out, not enough time for marketing and distribution. So, why not May?
Because March and April have many more advantages:
Right at the end or start of the Fiscal Year, which looks good on paper. Pleases investors, which means more money for them through, well, investments.
BEFORE GOLDEN WEEK, which is April 29th to May 5th. While not quite comparable, this is sort of like Japanese Christmas when it comes to gifts, but it varies from family to family. Also means launching before Japanese exam results season, which is another big one.
American tax return season, an influx of liquid cash into the consumer economy which brings real cash flow in the consumer space closer to holiday season than any other time except the holiday season.
The original Nintendo Switch had all of those benefits going for it and clearly it worked out for it. If they are able to get it out in March or April, aren't those enough reason to bite the bullet?
May also has a few things going against it;
It's the middle of a quarter, Nintendo likes to launch at the start or end (Lite, OLED and 2017 Switch, for example.) for the sake of investor relations (see above).
It's right before the summer games drought. That drought has reasons; January to April has more consumer spending on in-home entertainment. May to August sees that fall off in favour of holiday spending.
It falls awkwardly after Golden Week, just about, but way before Christmas. It is neither the thing to get for a good report card, nor is it the hot toy for Christmas. It's just... The late Spring console launching after people (in the US) have spent their tax return and just before they begin spending on holidays.
Games launching in May? That's reasonable. Hardware? Well, that's more complicated just because of the higher price, so consumer spending trends are more pronounced.
As I also mentioned there's the big gap in their schedule (per this financial report) and finally there's one point I want to reiterate. Software can slip, hardware tends not to. If this device was planned for late 2022 to early 2023, as reliable leakers have repeatedly expressed, that means that it was planned for FY22/23. Slipping a quarter from Q3 to Q4 (from Holiday to March) is reasonable, even for hardware planned years in advance. Slipping an entire fiscal year, from Q4(22/23) to Q1(23/24)? That's a lot less likely.
While I think May is possible, I think March or April is more likely. I concede that April is still Q1(23/24), but I think being the first month of a new fiscal year gives it a decent chance, a sort of possible Hail Mary launch window for a console that couldn't make Holiday launch, then couldn't even make EOY(Fiscal).
Those are my thoughts anyway. I know "Switch 1 launched with Zelda so why wouldn't Switch Drake" has a lot of weight, and not without reason, but as I said, I just don't think Switch Drake NEEDS Zelda nearly as much as Switch 1 did.