It's not just Nintendo... there are delays accross the board.

True; it's the curse of the 8th gen it seems...

I also think it also was they green lighted the bunch of new features that were alluded to in the digital event, plus they have other characters that haven't been announced yet. (During the tree house the presenter said that he is leaning towards using a few character that haven't been announced yet. So there is that also. It looks like since this is the first portable release they want it packed and working correctly out of the box.

Not just that, I think during the 7 gen they released way too many game that were broke out of the box and had to scramble to fix them. So they are taking a more cautious approch because they don't want to do damage to their brand or the industry as a whole this gen and not take the we can fix it after it ships attitude of last gen.

Plus Nintendo has always been natorious of pushing back it games because they take the don't ship it until its perfect approch most of the time. A few titles this gen could of used a little more time in development so if anything lately they have been shipping too early.

NIntendo can't afford for Smash to miss these holidays though. If it's a matter of polish, they should hire more people to get it done faster, and work their existing devs harder.

Well I don't think they are delay it either. The part of some games needing a little more referred more of the first few batches of games that seemed rushed. And the rest of comment was that it seems this gen more developers are holding their games back and finishing them, instead of rushing them out and fixing them afterward.

Don't be so cruel! It's not only embarrassing for Einsam_Delphin, it hurts everyone on this forum! I almost had to puke reading this thread.

My first thought was that they delayed the 3DS version to make sure that the Wii U version is ready for the holidays. They shifted the priorities. I don't believe Sakurai's story that they just need more time for debugging.

Or they reachted to the worries of many people that the Wii U version could be hurt by the 3DS version when the latter releases much earlier.

It's really important for them to have the Wii U version ready for the holiday season.

I don't think they'll delay it, they absolutely need a holiday game!

Exactly. Plus, Nintendo knows how important it is to release the game this year after all of the hype.

They need SSB for Wii U this holiday. What else will they have, otherwise? Xenoblade slipped to 2015. Yoshi's Woolly World is 2015. That new Kirby game is 2015. Zelda - again, 2015. Splatoon, 2015. Mario Party 10, 2015. Mario Maker, 2015.

Hyrule Warriors is coming in september, Bayonetta 2 in october. That Captain Toad game's apparently coming this year, so there's that.

You see, if they don't get SSB for Wii U out this holiday, they'll have nothing significant. They _need_ a big AAA game for that timeframe, and SSB is all they have.
I'm actually thinking they might have pulled people off development of the 3DS version, causing its delay, to focus on the Wii U version. SSB 3DS is now planned for october, so if the SSB U is coming holiday 2014 (as Nintendo stated), then a release 2 months after its 3DS counterpart, in december, seems reasonable and very possible.

Lastly, let's not forget that before, SSB 3DS was set for a 'summer 2014' release. Summer runs through september 20. The new official release date is now october 3. Best-case scenario, that's only a 2-week delay. That's not so bad. And if SSB U releases towards the end of december, that's still almost 3 months to get everything together.