I realized I never did a deep dive into understanding a few facets of what’s going on, let me elaborate.
There seems to be two camps that exist within here, the “H1 camp” and the “H2 Camp”
The arguments for H1 is using what Nate has said, and using the data from Gamescom. March is what it is centered around for reasons unknown. Reports that aren’t 100% clear and a comment from Nintendo regarding hardware this year and not actually saying no new hardware outright.
The arguments for H2 is using historical precedents for Nintendo’s predictable (hehe) actions. Their current lineup, the announced Direct lineup. The historical launch of other consoles and some Nintendo consoles being the second half of the year, and some other loosey bits that are reasons they feel comfortable with.
Nate only provided that “March is significant” and that’s all. He’s not entirely sure what it is, speculates on it, but knows it’s significant for developers.
Here are my thoughts: there’s a possibility that it is announced “Soon” but not soon as in this year, but early next year. After the Christmas season.
Trailers and information should be ready for developers by March of the following year, but Nintendo will not release a new system this fiscal year.
They will release the console about 2 months after the fact, so around May (days after the financial briefing).
You may be asking, isn’t that a bit too soon? The switch released within a 5 month window after it was announced. 5 months seems plenty for Nintendo to distribute, market, and deliver a console as they’ve done so already. It went from what? October 20 to March 3rd?
You may be wondering “but what about the switch?” The switch still has games going for it, smaller games, but games nonetheless. A game can potentially gain a boost and sell well with the newer system if it launched around then. But the people that are interested in the casual titles aren’t typically the early adopters for the new platforms where it is competitive and the new ones are generally the core audience members that bring in the casuals. Aka, those that buy a few games aren’t representative of the ones likely to buy the system day one. It’s the ones that buy several dozen who are most likely to buy a system day 1.
With the new system being compatible with the switch 1 games, it doesn’t detract from potential for those games to seek a good adoption on the new device. Wait how do I know it’s BC? I don’t, but I’m not going to assume it’s not because it makes no sense otherwise. BC has its advantages even in cross gen period.
I can see the possibility of a May launch only because in theory, it’s not an impossible metric. We have the gamescom leak. We have Nate’s Leak. We have the VGC and Eurogamer July leak.
So, it’s possible that March is about having things ready from partners for advertising by then already. It should be ready by around March for something that will be releasing later. The reason why I mentioned announcing the system in January, basically after the holiday shopping, or early February, is because this is during the slow period for consoles in terms of software and hardware. Quarter 1 of the calendar year isn’t as strong as some of the other quarters at times.
They aren’t going to gain a lot from not announcing vs announcing it. And the device is going to be 7 years old. It’s probably something that’s worth it for them.
Well; this sorta really isn’t a deep dive.
But I don’t see March or this Fiscal year at all for release, but can flirt with the idea of a May-ish release.
But can also see a September release being just as realistic and possible as a May release. October isn’t out of the question, nor is November, but there will be plenty of traffic around that time.