Latest Wii Successor Rumors: Skyward Sword Delayed, Starfox In the Works, New Retro Studios Game

So, there are a ton of new rumors that just hit the airwaves today about Project Cafe software, and but before we get into the potentially juicy stuff lets get into the part that makes our hearts skip a beat. Nintendo is (according to this report) apparently strongly considering releasing Skyward Sword around the time of the release of Wii 2. Keep in mind the speculative release date of Wii 2 is next year, which means this would become Twilight Princess part 2. Naturally this is just a rumor, and we wont know anything until June, but considering it’s happened before there is really no reason it couldn’t happen again. While many of us fans viewed that delay as a “mistake”, Twilight Princess was one of the best selling Zelda games ever made. That means, from a business perspective, delaying it was 100% successful.

I’ll just rapid fire the rest of these rumors out in list form, because I am sure with the above rumor the world is starting to spin around and around…

• Square Enix, Capcom, Sega, Konami, Activision, Rockstar/Take Two, EA, Namco, and Ubisoft all have dev kits and are presently working on at least one title for the Wii successor each.
• Nintendo has been conversing a lot over the last month with 3rd parties on how to best develop games for the new system.
• Nintendo is considering holding back some of their launch titles to give 3rd parties the spot light.
• A brand new Starfox game is in the works for Wii Successor
• Storage solution in development to get rid of 3rd parties storage complaints (aka, a harddrive, etc)
• The download service has been completely overhauled
• Hideo Kojima has approached Nintendo about Wii Successor, potentially to start an exclusive IP
• New Resident Evil in the works for Wii Successor
• Retro working on a new game for Wii Successor that isn’t Metroid related

Some of these rumors are common sense, while the rest seem possible in some fashion. Retro, notably, is looking to hire a handful of new people right now, so it adds a bit of weight to the fact they are working on another big title. All of this is overshadowed by the fear factor, but it does say Nintendo is only considering postponing Skyward Sword, not that they have actually decided to do so. It really comes down, in my opinion, to if they feel they will have a major launch title ready for the console. We all know SS is actually finished right now, so Nintendo would have a lot of explaining to do if they decided to delay it.

As always, these are rumors, and this time around they come from Gamelosophy, who originally leaked the Rockstar rumors (which other sites claim to have confirmed). One interesting note is the reason they are considering delaying SS is because of the strategy they did with Black and White launching just before the 3DS. I’m not actually sure what sort of “real” strategy advantage that actually provides, since Pokemon did not help push sales in any fashion. So… honestly I think this nugget isn’t true simply because the presented reason doesn’t actually make sense. They released B and W for the DS because they didn’t develop it for the 3DS and didn’t want to port it. It’s pretty much that simple. They got it out before the launch so it would still be relevant, versus being undermined by the 3DS.