Although the Polygon interview with Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser contained a lot of lengthy but vague answers, sometimes non-answers, he did talk about a topic that had not really been discussed much by Nintendo of America. They talked about how much the ongoing coronavirus pandemic impacted their release schedule.
Nintendo of Japan’s comments about it, usually during financial briefings, have been the same: “no delays so far, but we’re monitoring the situation just in case because delays could still happen”. According to Doug Bowser, there actually had been some delays, “especially during the earlier days” of the pandemic. His comments about the matter can be seen in full down below.
It was impacted some, especially during the earlier days, as we were sorting through what was going to happen with retailers, how consumers were going to be consuming content in terms of media content — where were they going to get their news, their entertainment — because that was going to force us to potentially pivot some of the marketing side.
Obviously, my responsibilities are for Nintendo of America, which is much more of a sales and marketing function. We were in close contact with our parent company in Japan, understanding any possible impacts on dev cycles, and if that would alter at all our release schedules. As we watch that, and as there may have been slight changes in dates, then we’re trying to react with understanding what parts of our evergreen catalog could we insert and drive to continue to keep the momentum that we have been seeing as we went into the period.
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