Considering Nintendo's adamant stance on taking the time to release a full game (games like Zelda), not over working their devs in crunches (Animal Crossing), and they newfound love of long-term support via DLC (Mario Tennis) I wouldn't be surprised if this was a calculated move to balance their target release date and dev work load, they just misread how it would be perceived to their fans and now their "back pedaling" is really them just coming out and confirming what was already planned to happen at a later date.