Same, I expected Yoshi for August, Smash for September, Mario Party for October, Pokemon for November, and Fire Emblem for December. That would have been killer.

I'm pretty sure they delayed from their original goal. Launching this alongside their online fee was the best possible scenario for them, but I'm sure the game is simply too big to release it in a couple of months, so they will take half a year to debug and test it.

Twin souls.

I expected this too.

Indeed. It makes a lot of sense to release alongside the online.

It's possible they may have opted for the later date in order for the game to avoid the usual early hiccups services experience, the service to start off with will likely have some issues as will the game itself as most online games do and also the later date gives the game some polish and balancing time.