Tools
Console Physical Release Planner
Pick your release date and the territories where boxed copies will sell. This planner works backwards to the rating approvals and manufacturing steps you need before launch.
The date your game goes live on all selected platforms simultaneously. Every milestone below is calculated backwards from here.
Physical Territories
Where boxed copies will be sold. Each territory adds its own rating body to the schedule.
Your Physical Release Plan
Your release date falls near the end-of-year period. Nintendo and Sony typically freeze cert review from late December. Verify your submission window directly with your platform contacts before locking this schedule. Cert windows crossing this freeze have been extended to account for the review pause.
Your schedule runs through the European summer period. Studios and first-party cert teams often run reduced staffing from mid-July through August. Review and submission turnaround can stretch. Confirm holiday coverage with your platform contacts before locking this schedule. Cert windows crossing this freeze have been extended to account for the review pause.
Tight Switch store window. On Switch the eShop page can only be submitted after the build passes lot check, which leaves limited time before launch for Nintendo to review the store page. Verify the eShop page can be reviewed in time, or pull the Switch cert earlier, before locking this schedule.
Pick a target release date to start your plan.
Hi, I'm Michele (or Miki for short).
Mapping out your launch? If you want someone who's run these timelines before, let's talk.
Notes
- Age rating submissions run on their own track, well ahead of manufacturing. Start them early: the ratings exist to get the classification logos onto the box, and they do not depend on your certification gold master.
- This planner simplifies the real chain. The real order is: ratings approved first, then platform certification submissions (up to three rounds), then the gold master, then manufacturing. This planner anchors the ratings directly to the gold master and does not model the platform certification rounds, so leave extra room for those between your rating approvals and the gold master.
- The gap between your last rating approval and the gold master leaves room for platform certification, up to three lot-check rounds. This planner assumes the longest case, a Nintendo Switch style chain, so if you skip Switch you will have extra room rather than less.
- China is not a simple age rating. Selling a game in mainland China needs a publishing licence (ISBN) from the NPPA, and a foreign company cannot apply directly: you work through a licensed local publisher and operator. Approval can take 12 months or more and is not a predictable lead time, so plan China as a separate track outside this schedule.
- Latin America beyond Brazil has no single mandatory rating body. Many markets either follow ESRB ratings in practice or have no compulsory classification for a boxed release, so plan the region case by case. Brazil is the exception, with its own mandatory DJCTQ classification covered above.