This is an idea which had occurred to me when Disaster was pushed back to early '09. Nintendo dropped a lot of major titles early in '08, and they've all sold amazingly without any holiday boost while keeping the Wii software release schedule looking lively during a period where new releases can be weak.

In other words, Nintendo has no need of a holiday boost for their first party releases. They know that Brawl, Kart and Wii Fit will move plenty of units this December anyway. They're deliberately leaving their holiday lineup weak so that third parties can get a nice big boost and prove that the waters in the blue ocean are fine.

Disaster has been in the works since at least 2006 and shouldn't be very far from completion unless some serious development snags have come up. But it's also the least "Nintendo" of Big N's upcoming titles, and the most likely to directly compete with hardcore third party games. Kirby Wii was also supposed to be on the menu this year, and nothing has been seen of it.

So yes, I think this might be a deliberate strategy on Nintendo's part to slay one of the Wii's last percieved problems.

Or maybe they really did hit a lot of development snags. It's not like Nintendo is afraid to push back release dates when a product isn't ready.

I think it's a bit of both - E3 is a great opportunity to capture the press attention and the titles they picked to showcase had a mix of third party as well as first party titles that push new hardware and will be perceived by the worlds press well.

Shaun Whytes snowboarding look very SSX to me in arcade style, fast and exciting and on the balance board, how many wii fit mums kids, husbands are gonna be wanting that title for xmas to play on mums or the wifes wii fit? Star Wars light sabre duels with a wii mote - needent say any more and RRR family game - again with the balance board.

Nintendo need third parties to find their comfort zone on the wii and i think 08 has been handed to them whilst Nintendo tweak their hardware.

Hell they were only a storage solution announcement away from Nintendo's E3 being labelled a huge success but then again E3 wasn't meant for the Geeks, they have all of the other shows and the internet for that.

It's a list I got from last October (8 months ago). It was put together by GAF mostly from public info sources (gamasutra, kotaku, ign, famitsu, etc.) If you look at the fact that the list was put out 8 months ago and so far it has all been true then I think you can put a very good reliability factor on the list. For instance this E3 it was confirmed that EAD no.2 was responsible for the three big titles that Nintendo showed (AC, Wii Sport Resort, Wii Music).

So more interestingly, seeing as how one division (EAD no.2) was showing all the big Wii games what ARE all the other in-house developers working on? Earlier this year Nintendo said it was shifting support from the DS to the Wii so I would guess some of the teams finishing up DS projects are moving on to Wii titles. Obviously the teams are of different sizes but at least two of them (EAD no.1&2) can work simultaneously on three Wii games and the rest can work on at least 2 DS games at the same time. Seems like the Nintendo ninja's are very good at keeping secrets.

After todays confirmation of Pikmin I would suppose that EAD no.4 is working on that. It's long been rumored that EAD no.5 is working on Starfox Wii. NSMB2 is probably being worked on by EAD no.4. Zelda Wii would almost certainly be handled by EAD no.3. The Software Planning and Development Division did the Check Mii Out Channel so I assume they're still working on more channels. More sketchy, but also reportedly in development is a new Donkey Kong title. I still tend to believe the rumor that Factor Five is working on Kid Icarus. Beyond that it seems like pure guessing unless some new info has come up.

I'll go back to being a joke poster now. :)

Wow, thats awesome [insert your favorite TV Detective]!

Honestly when you sit down and think about it, it shouldn't be that hard to figure all of this stuff out and keep tabs on it but for some reason it just seems like the kind of info that would be extremely difficult to get reliable and regular updates on..perhaps that is why there are no VGDevTrackerz.com websites ?

Anyways, when you put things together like this its pretty clear that Nintendo was focusing on the casual at E3 but that in no way means they are ignoring the hardcore for good.  Of course some folks need that attention in true attention whore fashion...but hey what else is new?

Well if you make posts like that after every 500th joke post or so you'll be way ahead of most of the people on this site =P

I don't believe your theory. I don't think Nintendo will serve the approximately 45 million Wii owners without a single core game in the most profitable time of the year. Sure Nintendo doesn't mind at this moment to give 3rd parties a share of the pie, but definitely it's not their idea to give them the whole pie.

At least 3rd party core games will definitely sell extremely well if Nintendo doesn't bring something to the table next to WiiMusic and Animal Crossing.

If it happens to turn out that way then something has gone wrong in the planning, as they released 2 major franchise (Brawl & Kart) earlier in the year.


It's clear that Disaster is what the title says. It's a shame that Monolith is working on this, while they could better spend their time on a good RPG.

2009 will be an awesome year for wii games. Zelda should be at least shown, as will Galaxy 2, new Retro project, Monolith will also hopefully be working on their project with Matsuno, Kid Icarus, maybe a new Wii Fire Emblem announced, we're sure of Pikmin 3.

And the 3rd party devs are also steaming with Monter Hunter 3, MadWorld and the Conduit already known for 2009.

Yeah I think the theory (as I understood it) is partially true. Nintendo definitely felt like they could meet two goals by focusing on the so-called casual games at E3. The first goal is obviously pushing their new market and expanding it ever larger, and their second goal is to turn over some of the spot light to the other developers to let them really shine this E3 with some great 3rd Party (so-called) core titles. And we certainly saw plenty of stuff from the third parties if you were paying attention.

Where I don't agree, and where I go more along with BengaBenga, is that Nintendo is not a foolish company and they like to make money as all companies do. This means that in order to fully buy the theory you would have to believe that they are not planning to reach out to the core group during the most profitable time of the year and instead relinquishing that entire (large) slice of the market over to the 3rd party devs. Which I just don't see happening ....ever.

I never thought of it that way. Good theory actually, I just hope they would of announced Star Fox Wii...

If Star Fox Wii doesn't get released ever, I will be very very pissed off at Nintendo. Seriously.

Harsh! Although I'll grant you the development hasn't instilled me with a sense of confidence either.

@smashchu2: fkusmot covered most of what I want to say, but I'll add that Retro has had the ability to work on two games for a while, and that they were chugging along on something even while also working on Metroid. They have something that's fairly far along, I know it. Now if they'll just release it...