Well I mean...they can only hold off an announcement for so long...we've got about 3 and a half months til the game comes out...they have to announce online sometime within the next couple months in order to increase hype and sales...

I'm guessing they'll announce it early November. that way it's not so early that the excitement about online goes away and late enough (less than a month) so you can get more pre-orders since it's coming out soon and you can still ride the online announcement excitement high.

Thinking from Nintendo's perspective though...that could steal some of Mario Galaxy's hype, which comes out early November.

I'd guess online would get announced mid-October...I'm sure plenty of advertisements and continuous Dojo updates would keep the hype up til Dec. 3...

twestern is right, when they do announce online, it would most likely be closer to the release date, to make it a bigger suprise and will put Brawl hype to it's maximum until launch, rather than announcing it today and having the hype wear off.

I could see it going either way. Either an announcement in November or October, though I expect it to be one of those two and not earlier. They seem to be big on hype this generation (downloadable Metroid Prime 3 trailers for example), and I'm guessing if it's anything like Metroid Prime most of their hype buildup will be in the last month or 2 before it's release.

I am, like others, still going to keep my hopes low, so as to avoid disappointment. Maybe because SSBM was my favorite game I am biased [ldo], but I am starting to think that with all these announcements - if the game lives up to high expectations - it could do insane sales. Adding the Pokemon trainer helps, snake helps and Sonic could obviously help a lot too.

Could this game beat Halo? However crazy it seems, I feel like every new detail we find out I come closer to saying yes.

Nothing, not even FFVII being remade on the PS3, could take away from the Mario hype, especially so close to release.  That's like saying anything is going to take away from the Halo 3 hype but Mario's on an even larger scale.