Honestly, I fail to see why character faces are that important.

And it doesn't need to be bundled with any of those games.
If it's gonna remove it's "niche" nametag and stand alone as a legit AAA franchise for Nintendo.
It needs to do just that, do it alone.
And to do that, they need to market the hell out of it. Same way they've been doing with all their big time Wii U titles since Mario Kart 8.
I remember back when almost nobody outside of Nintendo Fan forms knew about Splatoon and those people said Splatoon was gonna bomb and barely reach Wonderful 101 numbers.
One fantastic marketing campaign later... Look where it is now. And it didn't need Mario or co. to do it, it did it by itself
Xenoblade has the advantage of having a preestablished fanbase. Now it needs huge marketing to extend that fanbase exponetially.
A Xenoblade stand alone bundle + $50 price cut world certainly help things as well

Wow, 2015 is a pretty bleak year for Nintendo

Completely unacceptable. First was Zelda now Starfox.

Nintendo either
-A) once again under estimated the time on HD development
-B) need a game to sell in Q1 2016 as they have nothing planned, or
-C) wanting to release it alongside NX instead

Either way I am incredibly disgusted.

Ding Ding Ding! I think we have a winner!

I don't think it really has much to do with wanting more games for 2016. I think Miyamoto simply has more ideas that he wants in the game, and at this point the Wii U is not really going to be a success one way or another, so you may as well let the developers make the best Star Fox game possible, because sadly who knows when the next will be made.

It's not like if only Star Fox had made it out for holiday 2015 the Wii U would've finished with 30 million units sold instead of 17 million LTD.

Nothing makes any difference to the Wii U anymore, the audience has already voted as to what they think of the system.

Besides we all knew this game was on a tight development schedule, the extra 2-3 months at least is for the best. 

Not really. Millions of us really like the system and want more games for it. Too bad that we matter so little to Nintendo.

I haven't seen any marketing actions for Fatal Frame V and Zenobureido Cross. FFV got nothing and XenoX got.. ugh.. one short explanation trailer? Both games will flop hard in terms of sales due Nintendo's policy.

Or D) Listened to criticisms and decided since they've got nothing to lose, delay it so that they can add more or polish the game to address those criticisms,
Like how you want online multiplayer?
Or the tons of fans complaining about graphics?

Maybe because we're still not even at the end of September and the holiday season has yet to start?
At this point in time 2 years ago, there was still no TV commercial for Super Mario 3D World.
And the Mario Maker commercials didn't come until the end of August.
Everyone who has been following Nintendo since the beginning of the Wii U's life cycle have known about the game. It's been one of the main ones they've shown in all of the game shows they go to. (PAX, E3, etc.)
How about waiting for when the game is about to come out and is weeks away.

Edit: And Splatoon was supposedly going to bomb hard, and not even reach half a million liftime, but then one outstanding marketing campaign later... And the rest is history.

A) They past all HD development problems in Wii U first year.

B) Game in Q1 2016 will nothing change, Star Fox would had much better impact on Wii U sales and sales of game itself in holiday season than in Q1.

C) So you think we are getting NX in Q1!?

D) Most obvious, they need more time to polish game.