Nintendo Confirms Project Café; New Ocarina of Time 3D Teaser

UPDATE: There’s also a brand new teaser trailer for Ocarina of Time 3D on the official teaser site. Thanks to GoingBonkz for the tip.

Earlier today Nintendo confirmed that they are working on, and will be releasing, a successor to the Wii console. In an official statement the console was confirmed to be hitting shelves at some point during 2012. This, combined with the fact that it did not appear in any financial forecasts for the current fiscal term, rules out a Q1 release. Chances are that we will not see the console before the 2012 holiday season.

Nintendo Co. Ltd. has decided to launch in 2012 a system to succeed Wii, which the company has sold 86.01 million units on a consolidated shipment basis between its launch in 2006 and the end of March 2011.

We will show a playable model of the new system and announce more specifications at the E3 Expo, which will be held June 7-9, 2011 in Los Angeles.

What does this mean for Skyward Sword? Well, it is very, very unlikely that Nintendo will port the game to the new console because it is specifically designed to take advantage of the Wii Motion Plus. As a matter of fact, a non-Q1 release in 2012 pretty much confirms an October release for Skyward Sword. Any later than that and they’d be approaching the end of the Wii life cycle, running into the risk of the new console overshadowing Skyward Sword by a large margin and thus reducing sales. It is safe to assume that information on the new console will become available in a steady fashion starting next year’s E3, and I doubt Nintendo would release a new Zelda game without giving it at least 6 months of unrivaled spotlight time.

So there you have it folks, this is as close to a release date as we’ll get for both the console and Skyward Sword without actually getting a release date.

[Source: Nintendo Japan Press, via Kotaku]