Yesterday we published some interesting info about the Sega and Nintendo partnership, coming from a source near Nintendo. But that source did not only reveal us some details about SEGA games (quite some time before they were officially revealed, so the legitimacy of the source was proven), but also some info on the upcoming Nintendo lineup.
For starters, our source has confirmed that the majority of what we already know thanks to Nintendo Direct will be Nintendo’s E3 lineup, since there will be not many big surprises for the event or the 2013 lineup. Nintendo will hold itself up on a few titles until the end of this year. Those will be Game & Wario, Pikmin 3, Wii Fit U, Wonderful 101, Wii Party U, Zelda Wind Waker and Mario, which will be shown and playable at E3 for Wii U. Animal Crossing, Mario & Luigi, Mario Golf, Pokémon, Mario Party and Zelda are also planned for the 3DS.
Nintendo’s launch window has been modified, and titles that should have been released this Christmas will move to 2014. That’s what happened to the so-called Yoshi’s Yarn game; it has been delayed to 2014 since Nintendo will make “Yoshi’s Year”, in a similar way they had made 2013 “Luigi’s Year.”
The next 3D Mario game for Wii U won’t be a Galaxy game, but it will take some titbits of it to make a full open world platformer. It will make an intensive use of the touch screen for some game mechanics.
About 3DS, there will be no big surprises for the rest of the year. Nintendo will publish some little games, niche series and forgotten IPs directly at eShop, similar to how they published Mario Vs Donkey Kong. There will also be a 3DS Japan only Nintendo Direct presenting some games for the Japanese market, like Daigasso Band Brothers, a Skip game and a Monolith title.
There is a 3DS Kirby game in development, but it won’t be shown for some time. The same goes for a planned Metroid 3DS game; it has been in development for some time but we won’t see it soon. I can personally corroborate this last one, since I personally got the same info about Metroid 3DS from a Nintendo rep back in 2011.
It’s unknown who is developing this game, but the same source claims Retro Studios is working on two games at the moment. One of them will be huge; it will in, fact be revealed in a Nintendo Direct event after E3, but it won’t be released until late 2014, as it will be Nintendo’s big bet for the year along with Smash Bros. It’s a shooting game, from an already known IP. In this game, you will be able to scan scenery with the Wii U Gamepad and use the Wii U Gamepad Touch Screen to control your spaceship. The game is looking really good graphically–one of the most advanced graphics you’re going to see on Wii U. The other game is said to be a smaller game, similar to what Donkey Kong Country Returns was. Might this one be Metroid 3DS?
There will be other games revealed for 2014, at Nintendo’s E3 and upcoming Nintendo Directs after.
Mario Kart U will be presented at E3, and will be playable at the fair, as Nintendo confirmed not too long ago (again, when the source claimed this, that hadn’t been announced yet). The game will be very online focused, with lots of Miiverse and Community options. Missions will make a comeback, and they will add some kind of achievements system to the game too. It will be released in 2014, meanwhile, the third exclusive Sonic game will take its place, as we reported yesterday.
There will be a teaser for Bayonetta 2 at the E3 too, and a Yoshi’s Island 3 teaser. They will also show a pretty shocking teaser for Smash Bros U/3DS. The game will feature sightly different gameplay than older installments of the Smash Bros series. The 3DS version will be very different to the Wii U one, content wise. There will be a few newcomer characters shown at the teaser: Little Mac, Takamaru, Tom Nook, Palutena, Dark Pit (the source says he is not sure if it’s a transformation for Pit like Zelda/Sheik or a standalone character), and Bayonetta.
There will be other games–smaller ones. Nintendo is working in a new IP of a genre it has not much experience with. Not much was disclosed besides that. There will be other games, like a new Project Zero game for Wii U. Already revealed ones like Shin Megami Tensei Vs Fire Emblem, Zelda, and X will take some time still. The one we might be seeing sooner is X, which will be released the first half of 2014 in Japan.
Last, but not least, 2014 will be a slow year for Nintendo 3DS, in favour of pushing up the Wii U catalogue and sales in a similar way as they’ve done with 3DS this year. Third parties will not change too much on their terms with Nintendo, although there will be a few important multiplatform games that will be at Nintendo consoles too. One of them will be a really important third party IP that will turn exclusive to Nintendo in a similar way of Bayonetta 2 did. It will also create loads of drama like Sega’s exclusivity deal did. The source has not disclosed if this IP is coming from the Sega X Nintendo deal or not.
Those are all the information and rumors this source has claimed. As we said before, we are confident about this source legitimacy, but as it not official and it can still change as time goes, we will label this as a RUMOR.
