Nintendo boss says early Switch / NX announcement was “a special case”, suggests it won’t be the same with next system

You may recall that Nintendo announced the NX, which would turn out to be the Switch, in March 2015. It would take two full years for the platform to actually launch.

During an investor Q&A this week, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa said that this early announcement was “a special case”. The company announced early plans for mobile at the time, and wanted to make sure fans knew it wasn’t abandoning the dedicated video game platform business. Furukawa suggested that such early announcement won’t be necessary when it’s time to unveil the Switch successor.

Furukawa’s full words:

Looking back at the release of information leading up to the Nintendo Switch launch, we announced the “NX” development codename in March 2015 during a joint announcement with DeNA Co., Ltd. regarding our business and capital alliance (as it related to joint development of smart-device game applications and its operation, and also the core system development centered around Nintendo Account). When we announced our entry into the mobile business at that time, we needed to let people know that Nintendo would be continuing to focus on the dedicated video game platform business as our core business. So, I believe that the timing of the Nintendo Switch announcement was a special case.

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