Nintendo Confirms Mario, Smash Bros. Coming This Year

Some excellent news for Nintendo fans: two of the 'big three' games are coming out this year. At an event held in Washington state Reggie Fils-Aime was able to confirm that Smash Bros. and Super Mario Galaxy will be released before the end of the year. Excellent to hear such news, of course ... but other people had different priorities. For Metroid fans, it does indeed look like Samus will have to wait until 2008. Other than that, the company was all good news in general: "Typically, about half of home consoles in Japan are placed in the living room -- with Wii that figure is 75%. In France, 15 of the top 15 games recently were Nintendo. In the US, Fils-Aime says they are seeing 'early signs of significant market change.' The number of female purchasers of hardware are up 42%. The number of people over age of 30 purchasing Nintendo DS is up 127%. Tighten that age range to people over 35, and the number is up 212%. 40% of Wii owners have connected to the internet. 3.3 million plus Virtual Console downloads." Game|Life has hands-on impressions of Brain Age 2 and Mario Strikers Charged , two of the new games shown off at the event.

Metroid Prime 3

[AKAImBatman]

Here's the original text of the summary before Zonk changed it:

For Metroid fans, it does indeed look like Samus will have to wait until 2007.

Oh noes! Not 2007! I don't think I can wait that long! Wait, 2007?

Oh! Zonk changed it...

For Metroid fans, it does indeed look like Samus will have to wait until 2008.

Oh noes! Not 2008! That's even longer!

Wait, the article he links to says...

Thus far, Nintendo hasn't announced an official release date for Metroid Prime 3, so we're thinking that it's going to slip into 2007, particularly because the company doesn't want to release too many franchise games during the Wii's 2006 launch.

Poor confused Zonk. Business Week republished a GameDaily preview of Metroid Prime 3 from 2006. so the date stamp on Business week says 2007, even thought the real date stamp is November 07, 2006 [gamedaily.com]. (In late 2006, the MP3 date was pushed to March of 2007 before being pushed again in Feburary.) As amusing as it is, that wasn't a very nice prank by BW.

The real release dates can be found over here [gonintendo.com]. Here are a few of interest:

• July 30 - Mario Strikers Charged Nintendo
  
• Aug. 20 - Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
  
• September - Battalion Wars 2
  

Mario Galaxy and Super Smash Bros. Brawl are both listed as a "To Be Determined" date in 2007. The expectation is that they will be fall or holiday releases. For those of you who haven't seen it yet, the official Super Smash Bros. website is up here:

http://www.smashbros.com/en_us/index.html [smashbros.com]

(Yes, there was a Slashdot story on that.)

Metroid Prime - probably 2007 (article is wrong)

[QMalcolm]

Metroid Prime has been unofficially officially dated for August 20.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=15752 5 [neogaf.com]

But the article actually says

"so we're thinking that it's going to slip into 2007, particularly because the company doesn't want to release too many franchise games during the Wii's 2006 launch."

Which is, um, an interesting way of putting things for a current article.

For European Slashdot readers...

[iapetus]

...simply add 2-3 years onto each release date for your local version.

Why is it that the console manufacturer that most needs to provide region-free games is the last to do so?

Re:Wii needs strong third party games too

[AKAImBatman]

1. Super Paper Mario has sold over a million copies [vgchartz.com] as has Wario Ware Smooth Moves, Rayman Raving Rabbids, and Red Steel. (source [vgchartz.com]) Two of those are third party titles.

2. Nintendo is perfectly willing to share the spotlight. It's the third parties that bet on the PS3 and XBox. Up until recently they've been decrying the Wii as "two gamecubes duct taped together" or "gamecube 1.5". They kind of screwed themselves over.

3. One Word: NiGHTS

4. Three Words: Guitar Hero III

5. 26 Words: Geometry Wars: Galaxies, LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga, Rayman Raving Rabbids 2, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition, Tomb Raider: Anniversary :-P

Re:Metroid Prime 3

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I was about to make a comment that Amazon just put a notice up that Nintendo announced the Metroid Prime release date of August 20...