Lately I have been seeing a lot of speculation posts about Nintendo possibly doing a surprise release with the Nintendo NX this holiday season.
Stop it. That’s just ridiculous. If you honestly think that a multi-billion dollar company has just been sitting on warehouses full of systems and software and are ready to release within a month and a half, I have a Phantom system I want to sell you. First lets look at at the timeline. Today is October 3rd. Nintendo has less than 8 weeks to distribute, ship, and support the release of a major product. Oh, and don’t forget the extra controllers, other accessories, and software. But Chris, what about The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild! They could release just Zelda! Yeah, that would work!
No it wouldn’t. Lets just say that Reggie and Miyamoto ate enough Super Mushrooms one day to decide that Nintendo of America could actually pull this off. This means that nothing has leaked onto the Internet about design, controllers, internals. In a day and age where the specs from the latest iPhone are leaked months before, this is hard to believe. Back to the software angle, there is no way that Nintendo of Japan is going to let a system be released with one software title. They have learned from the past (looking at you original 3DS) that systems with TERRIBLE software launches take years to recover, if at all. Marketing a new product takes millions of dollars, and word of mouth cannot solely be relied upon. There is no way that this system will be ever called the “NX”. It’s just a code name like Nintendo 64 was Project Reality, and the Nintendo GameCube was Dolphin. Marketing has to be done, and it is just not ready yet.
Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
It doesn’t matter that “X retailer” has a listing in their system, of course they do. A listing in the system might be necessary for place holding, or to eventually open up preorders. Nintendo will be releasing more details on the Nintendo NX when they are ready. For now, Nintendo’s strategy is to sell off all of the old WiiU hardware this holiday season as quickly as possible. I wouldn’t be surprised if you saw various “fire sale” bundles around Black Friday which included extra top tier WiiU games for a low price. These units have to move before the release of the new system, as retailers are swimming in them as dust collects. Everyone knows the NX is coming, just look at the shrinking software sections in your retail stores like Target, Walmart, and Best Buy. The retailers know it, educated video game buyers know it, and Nintendo knows it. But it won’t be until next year.