This has been Nintendo's M.O. for years now... spread out big releases, especially first party titles, in order to maximize sales. Why do you think Brawl got delayed from holiday '07 to Q1 '08 for example? They didn't want it going head to head with Mario Galaxy during the holidays. They also held Wind Waker back to a March '03 release so it wouldn't compete with Metroid Prime and Mario Sunshine during the 2002 holidays on the GC.
This is why Pikmin 3 is not a launch title. You've got both Nintendo Land and NSMBU launching with the system, and Nintendo knows that the vast majority of Wii U buyers are going to pick one or both of these up. And let's be honest, if Pikmin 3 was available at launch, 3rd party sales would suffer tremendously because all people would be buying are those three Nintendo games. Then when 3rd parties don't support the system as strongly citing low software sales as the reason, everyone will complain that 3rd parties just hate Nintendo.
On 2/24/13, MB1025 said:
You know I was always wondering why no one ever used the dollar sign for $ony, but then I realized they have no money so it would be pointless.
