Release Strategy of Nintendo Switch

I’ve been a Nintendo fan most of my life. I don’t actually remember a time in my life before I had a GameBoy with Pokémon. My favorite video game to this day is Super Smash Bros Melee, a game which feature characters from Nintendo’s most popular franchises, released all the way back in 2001. However, Nintendo’s most recent console, the Wii U, hasn’t done very well compared to higher capacity rivals, the Sony PS4 and the Microsoft Xbox One. This Forbes article talks about Nintendo’s odd release strategy of the New Nintendo Switch, which is due to be out in March 2017, two months after they will release the specs about the console and the games that will launch with it. This also seems odd, considering it’s after the Holidays (the previous two generations of video game consoles were released before Christmas for all three companies), and after the release of the Xbox One S and the PS4 Pro. This is also a relatively small amount of time between announcing the console and launching it. All of this would lead me to expect to dampened sales. Maybe it will work out for Nintendo, but with sluggish sales of its previous console, Nintendo can’t afford to mess this up.