Nintendo generally leaves things till last minute. I've been seeing stuff for Mario Charged. That's their latest game out, that's the one they want to sell right now. And I didn't start seeing the adds until about a week before the release. Because before that, they were focusing on Pokemon Revolution and before that Mario Party.

 mee too. I was all about to cry until I started to actually read the threads. I can't wait for this game MP games are da shiznit.

 Sales-> Halo

Quality-> Metroid

Hype-> Killzone 

It's a joke because the story itself has functionally limited shelf life. What if ads for Metroid Prime 3 started tomorrow? Or even next week? This article then becomes a pointless snapshot of how Matt Cassamassina was worried in early August about how there might not be enough ads for a game. This might as well be a blog post on GoNintendo.com or a livejournal entry, followed by the mood he's in or what emo song he's got playing in WinAmp.

And form a journalistic point of view, what is the point of this article? This just simply is not newsworthy. News is meant to report events, not fabricate worries about potential events. And if it's meant to be editorial, then it is very short-sighted and possibly meant to rabble rouse instead of make pointed arguments. In legitimate journalism you send the writer of crap like this back to his desk or you even send him packing. But apparently journalism skills are not a requirement to write for gaming sites, which is why it is hype-driven to the point of something not having enough hype is newsworthy to them because they are used to hype.

You can predict the future?

Can you tell me when the world will end?

 Whoa, calm dow, man. Only speculating! sheeeesh...

You stated it as fact.

Ads for Wii, PS3, 360 and a bunch of big games like Zelda: TP and Gears of War only began a couple weeks after their respective release where I live (at least as far as regular TV-adds goes). I think it's a commonly used strategy to not waste money on adverticement on producs they know will sell out on launch day anyway. Once the "hardcores" all have bought their copy and sales start to dwindle and there is ample stock they start the add campaign to catch the casuals. I would not be surprised if the same applies to MP3.

They need to do some sort of promotion to hype the game to maximum level. This is one of the first wave of games for the hardcore and Nintendo need to emphasise on that.

 You know, for a videogamer, you sure don't seem to have a lot of fun. :P

I thought predictions were what this site was all about.