E308: Rhythm Heaven bumped by Cammie Dunaway's wrist

I just came out of an interview with NOA's senior director of corporate communications, Charlie Scibetta. I asked about the noted absence of big games like Kirby Super Star Ultra and Rhythm Heaven, which hadn't even been announced previously, at their big press conference yesterday. From what he told me, the omissions weren't really some kind of strategy, but just part of an effort to keep the show short.

"We're showing them here on the show floor. We're pushing those games hard. The short answer to your question as to why they weren't in the press conference is that you only have so much time in a press conference. If we included every single title and did demos of every single the reaction from the people at the press conference would be 'you went a little long.'

At least there's no anti-Rhythm Heaven agenda, as speculated by ... probably somebody. Scibetta also said that Nintendo is still committed to the current DS for the foreseeable future:

"The DS is also very successful, and in the June NPD data we think that the DS might overtake the Wii as the number one console for the month. It's selling great; we've sold 70 million units of that worldwide. As Reggie said in the press conference, we'll be close to 100 million by the end of the year. You're seeing the creative opportunity for developers. You see Spore, Guitar Hero, and now Grand Theft Auto were just announced for the DS. You see a lot of publishers excited about developing for that platform. And so, to think about cutting that short and moving onto the next console right away, we just don't see a lot of logic in doing that."

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