NintendObs Thinks: What's up with these Nintendo "Release Date Revealed" announcements?
Two farsighted insights and since the console is already established, now it's all about the games.
What an unexpectedly strong week that was in Nintendo news, marked by two important reveals delivered in the exact same seemingly random fashion. On Tuesday, with a brand-new trailer Nintendo announced the release date for Xenoblade Chronicles 3 set two months in advance from its original September 2022 plans to July 29. Then on Friday this time with raw and simple gameplay footage they did exactly the same with the unveiling of Splatoon 3’s release date decided six weeks later on September 9. However, there’s more than meets the eye in the happening of these "Release Date Revealed" announcements, specifically regarding the new practices that accompanied each of them which Nintendo had never done before.
With the reveal Xenoblade Chronicles 3’s release date, Nintendo for the first time made it so a game’s Special Edition will be available worldwide exclusively through their My Nintendo Stores, whether in Japan, Europe, North America and Australia/New Zealand too. This means Nintendo will be able to limit the amount of collector’s editions they’ll be the only ones to sell directly to consumers in order to prevent scalpers, but also since these orders will be placed via a Nintendo Account, this will allow them to identify who their biggest fans are for each game that comes with a special edition and how many these fans are for each series, all while pinpointing the people who put their money where their mouths are fast enough before these limited items run out, and therefore the people Nintendo can effectively rely on for the future of their franchises.
If you recall, this follows a recent modification on Nintendo.com whereby every gamepage and every item sold by the official North American Nintendo website are offered through the single storefront of its My Nintendo Store, which in retrospect was most definitely a precursor to this special edition move. It’s therefore easy to expect that future collector’s editions will only be made available directly through Nintendo, especially since now that Nintendo has the capacity to do so, it will also allow them to collect more potent data on their players without any of the losses in that department they would incur were they to rely on outside retailers. This might be too prescient at this time but, in the long run they could use this mechanism to guarantee a sizeable amount of day one purchases from their new hardware directly to consumers, effectively neutralize scalpers in the process at the very moment when they’re most damaging.