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What the Hell is Nintendo Waiting For?

What the Hell is Nintendo Waiting For?

The NX launch window is getting a little tight. Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited that we have something to look forward to as early as March, but I am a little weirded out by having something to look forward to as early as March. I may need some of you to correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it a bit atypical to know absolutely nothing about a console that’s so close to hitting the market? While I personally have full faith in the big N to deliver, the circles in which I run are starting to lose their minds over the lack of communication.

This is partly our fault, of course. The love for Nintendo transcends status, vocation, and professional standards. One reason NX rumors find their way into headlines so often is because we in the industry are just as thirsty as you guys are for every little morsel of supposed information. Never before in the console space has the game of telephone been so seemingly high stakes. That thing that got tweeted by that one person who knows a guy who used to work with the intern who spent two months writing PR emails at Nintendo becomes the story of the week, and fans run in circles.

Another reason September in particular has been especially rough is because of the Eurogamer leak. I love the guys over at Eurogamer and Digital Foundry, but dang if they didn’t throw fuel on the fire by suggesting Nintendo would reveal the NX this month. They made it sound as though things were coming along more swimmingly than previously projected. “Finally,” the sacred leak article proclaimed, “we’ve heard from one source that NX planning has recently moved up a gear within Nintendo ahead of the console’s unveiling, which is currently slated for September.”

That was all we needed to hear. It seemed perfectly reasonable to assume that Nintendo would reveal the NX right before this year’s Tokyo Game Show, and then show off some early gameplay footage on the show floor running on demo units.

Well, we all woke up one morning to the announcement of an imminent Nintendo Direct, but it turned out to be focused exclusively on the 3DS. Our hearts collectively sank, and now we’re left wondering if there’s any logical point in September for Nintendo to coordinate a reveal. The Tokyo Game Show begins on September 15, so there’s no way Nintendo would spring such a huge reveal before then without first inviting the press and announcing the date more than a week in advance.

What the Hell is Nintendo Waiting For?

Of course, it’s important to remember that Nintendo plays by its own rules. There’s no reason to think that the NX has to be revealed via a public event with the press and media present. Nintendo could be perfectly content and confident to reveal the NX through a Direct and supply the media with detailed press releases immediately following. It’s also entirely possible, given how well Nintendo has been able to keep official information under wraps, that a surprise reveal event is planned for the Tokyo Game Show. The latter seems unlikely, however, since it’s already been stated that Nintendo will not be present at this year’s show.

As a final bastion of hope, we cling to an article published by the French gaming site Gameblog that correctly predicted the date and purpose of the recent PlayStation Meeting. The article stated that according to its sources, Sony was holding an event on September 7 to reveal its upgraded PlayStation. That, of course, was right on the money. It’s interesting to note, then, that those same sources suggested that Sony’s may have chosen this date as not to be overshadowed by the hype generated by Nintendo revealing the NX “the week of September 12.”

It’s the wild west out here, people. Sony is about to release an upgraded “4Kinda” console, Microsoft is already hyping up a beastly new console over a year away, and here we are, six months away from the launch of the NX, and we have no idea what it is yet. Nintendo must be playing it cool for a reason, but I simply can’t guess why. Here’s hoping we get, at the very least, an announcement for an announcement, in the very near future. How thirsty are you for an NX reveal, and when do you think it will actually come? Why might Nintendo be playing its cards so close, and do you think the Eurogamer leak was accurate in its predictions? Let me know in the comments.

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