“We have intentionally delayed the launch” of some 3DS games to 2012- Nintendo

Many Nintendo games for the 3DS that were supposed to be released like this year, Kid Icarus: Uprising and Luigi’s Mansion 2 being the most notable of them, were recently delayed to a 2012 release date. Just in case you’re wondering why that’s the case, Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata has stated that the firm postponed their release intentionally.

Speaking to investors, Iwata said: “For us to provide software titles one after another, one idea is, ‘Isn’t it possible for Nintendo to stock some of its software titles instead of launching them as soon as the development is completed?’

“Video games need to stay fresh, so it is not practical for us to put them on hold for too long, but we think that some of them may be held for a certain amount of time so that there will be a short interval between when they are completed and when they are launched.

“We are taking on this sort of challenge for the Nintendo 3DS. For example, when we look at the software lineup for the year-end sales season, it is so dense that, if we added any more software, the total sales would not increase. Accordingly, we have intentionally delayed the launch of some software titles to early next year.”

And while Nintendo is releasing games like Mario Kart 7 and Super Mario 3D Land for the handheld this year, they have, by and large, failed to release enough quality games for the system till now, right from its launch till this day. “Offering software one after another is a never-ending challenge we have to try to overcome,” Iwata said regarding this. “We failed to offer strong software titles without long intervals in the first half of this year, but it was not because we did not place importance on offering them one after another.

“Even when we understand the significance of this, we are sometimes unable to do so. We should have prepared a more thorough backup plan. We were planning to launch software in the first half of this year without too many intervals. However, we ended up delaying the launches of multiple software titles, and we could not make up for it. Around the same time, the third-party titles did not become huge hits, either.”

[Nintendo]