Good that it means the game will have a longer dev cycle, bad that the system will see a drought between DKCRTF and this.

It's good that we know a release date. It's okay... I'm not happy but it is ok. But where are the games in March and April? Nintendo needs another Kirby: Triple Deluxe : Announcement -> release one or two months later. Otherwise the first half of 2014 will be the next 'first half of 2013'^^ I don't care because I can finally play some games which I couldn't play before because I had no time. But it would be worse for the Wii U in general.

Bolded above.  I agree.  Sad but true.  I've come to the conclusion that Nintendo is my companion system.  I buy it for Nintendo games and [hopefully] some unique 3rd party offerings (not simply washed down ports from PS4/X1 games).

Titanfall will keep me occupied [again, I hope] in the mean time.  Not sure if I will buy a PS4 when Infamous comes out or wait for bundles.

Just before E3, and right at the time sales start to struggle. This is perfect.

Yarn Yoshi certainly could be ready. Good-Feel, aside from small project stuff for Wii Play Motion and the 3DS Street Pass, their last big game (Kirby) came out in 2010. That is PLENTY of time to wrap up development on Yoshi.

"X", while it's likely a summer title, also could be a candidate. Monolith Soft, with the exception of the delayed NA localization of Xenoblade, has likely been working on it in some form since they released Xenoblade back in June of 2010. They too have had plenty of time, even for a smaller developer, to finish up and polish such a game.

Bayonetta 2 has been in development since at least 2012, and should be wrapping production any time now.

Hyrule Warriors was just announced, and while we have no idea whether it is inteneded as a summer title or not, it could very well be ready to blow by April for all we know.

And along those lines, Hyrule Warriors was obviously already pretty far along in development by the time they revealed it, even though none of us had any idea such a game was even being thought about, let alone actually made. Thus there could be and very likely are several other Wii U games in various stages of development right now that we also don't know anything about yet. Nintendo could always spring one of those on us as a surprise March/April title.

Is any of that reaching? Sure, I could see someone trying to make that argument. But on the other hand, as stated, there nontheless are several strong candidates which could very well be ready, and there is still Sega's third mystery exclusive Sonic related title to consider. So who the hell knows? lol