Does Nintendo Lie?
Let's take the three main cases I've seen so far.
They lied about the DS Lite!
January 26, 2006:
A lot of hay gets made over David Yarnton's DS Lite denial. I'm sorry to the fans across the pond, but this is like asking the head of your local Apple Store when the new iPads are coming out. Sure, he's managing Nintendo products in his country; but Nintendo Japan isn't going to tell him anything about future product plans. Nobody lied here. He just didn't know.
They lied about the 3DS XL!
June 4, 2012:
The 3DS XL was announced on the 22nd, less than 3 weeks later.
This is clearly a non-denial. "Speculative," "numerous errors," and "not been confirmed" are all things Nintendo can say about any rumor. (In Nintendo's mind, it's unconfirmed until they officially confirm it.)
They lied about the Switch Lite!
April 25th, 2019:
The Switch Lite was announced on July 10. E3 ended on June 13. No lies detected.
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I've probably missed a whole lot of like examples, and if someone wants to link to one I'll dig into that too. But what do we learn? That as with any corporation, you need parse the statements carefully. Outright lying is a very dangerous thing for a public company to do; outright lies open it to government and legal action. But a company is free not to tell the whole truth. Look at who's putting out the statement -- is it coming from the top, or just from a guy who works for Nintendo? -- whether it's time limited ("not at E3"), and whether it's speaking only to the rumor at hand ("speculative").
Now look at yesterday's statement, coming right
out of a PDF provided to investors: "Please note that we have no plans to launch a new Nintendo Switch model during 2020."
"We have no plans" -- Okay, sure, plans could change. But they'd have to change awfully quick to completely upend Nintendo's long-term hardware release planning. If right now they're really not planning on a new Nintendo Switch arriving in 2020, then most likely one is not going to show up.
"Launch" -- This leaves open the possibility that Nintendo could announce a new Nintendo Switch model in 2020, but not release it until 2021.
"New Nintendo Switch model" -- The natural way to understand this is as "a model within the Nintendo Switch family." If you want to lawyer it out in such a way that this somehow allows for new Nintendo Switch Pro but not a new Nintendo Switch, well... have fun with that, I guess.
"During 2020" -- This is the nail in the coffin, to my mind. Nintendo isn't just casting doubt on rumors; they gave us a firm timeline. See the "not at E3" incident above. When Nintendo is this specific, they have a reason for it.