Wii U Release Date - Spring/Summer 2012?

Following on from Nintendo's recent announcement of the Wii U, their next home system, and the successor to the Wii, there have been plenty of questions flying around the internet, posed by interested people like you. And while a lot's left to be uncovered - what games will it launch with, how many fancy new controllers can it support, amongst others - the hottest question on people's lips, "When will the Wii U launch?", may just have inadvertantly been answered.

When quizzed by Gamespot about whether we can expect a version of Sonic Generations, SEGA's upcoming (and incredible looking) 2D side scrolling Sonic game on the Wii U, SEGA's executive vice president of marketing, Alan Pritchard, was quick to pour water on the idea, because the console was going to launch too late.


“The timing just doesn’t work." Pritchard said. "Generations releases this November, and the Wii U is coming out next spring/summer. I think one of the things we don’t have to do, or reduce where possible, is we don’t want to port games. I think if there’s going to be a Sonic game for the Wii U, it needs to be built from the ground up."

Nintendo had previously confirmed that the console wouldn't see a release during the 2011/12 financial year, meaning the earliest it would hit store shelves would be April 2012. We predicted as much in our recent Wii 2 rumour round-up - and perhaps, just perhaps, it could be about the only thing (along with the touchscreen controller) we guessed right.