Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima says that it is more important to gradually provide new titles throughout the year.
You may have noticed that the Nintendo Switch has a rather small selection of launch titles. As of now, only ten titles are confirmed for the console’s launch (with only two of those being first-party Nintendo games), as opposed to 34 for the Wii U and 21 for the Wii. But Nintendo doesn’t think this is a particularly big problem, as Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima stated in an earnings call that it is more important to space out its software releases.
“Some of those who have seen this lineup have expressed the opinion that the launch lineup is weak,” said Kimishima. “Our thinking in arranging the 2017 software lineup is that it is important to continue to provide new titles regularly without long gaps. This encourages consumers to continue actively playing the system, maintains buzz, and spurs continued sales momentum for Nintendo Switch.”
Way back in 2012, the late Satoru Iwata offered similar sentiments: “Nintendo tends to release too many titles at the launch of a hardware system and as a result suffers a drop in new games for quite some time after launch, and for the Wii U launch, we are being very careful not to let it happen.”
Indeed, Nintendo already has plans to pepper the year with big name titles: Mario Kart 8 is due out in April, ARMS in spring, Splatoon 2 in summer and Super Mario Odyssey in September.
Source: GameSpot.
