Soundwave on 15 January 2013
The problem is Nintendo panicked with the poor 3DS launch, and realizing that Nintendogs + cats wasn't selling systems and Brain Training probably wouldn't either, they pushed Mario into over drive.
I don't even think NSMB2 was supposed to be out this year, given what we know about it's dev cycle too it appears to have been rushed into development by a B-team at EAD. This was probably supposed to be NSMBU's year.
But I think Nintendo was at a loss as to how to sell the 3DS, and with the 3DS XL they figured they needed NSMB for the 3DS as well this year.
