Nintendo’s newest party game, Wii Party, is coming much sooner than we may have thought. After originally being announced as a game that would simply make it out this fiscal year, which runs until March 31, 2011, it’s already set for release next month in Japan on July 8.
Wii Party is a party game where you play as your Mii, but beyond that detail and some screenshots, we really haven’t heard or seen much about it. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata said last month when Wii Party was announced that Nintendo would “aim to make it a marquee party game for Wii.”
Iwata also promised it would have “unique gameplay only available with the Wii remote,” though that very well could be nothing more than marketing speak. The most recent Mario Party, Mario Party 8, did, however, end up having a lot of minigames that didn’t require any of the Wii remote’s unique functions, though that can possibly chalked up to simply being released just a few months after the Wii’s release.
With the Japanese release on July 8, we’re left wondering when we’ll see the game released in North America. There hasn’t been much of a pattern to the delay in Nintendo releases between Japan and North America; Wii Fit was released more than five months later in the North America than in Japan, Wii Play three months, Wii Sports Resort one month, and both Wii Fit Plus and Wii Music were each released just days apart in Japan and North America. Some Nintendo games, like Super Mario Galaxy 2, have actually been released in North America before Japan (albeit by just a few days), so you could say the trend has been to narrow the gap between North American and Japanese releases.
We should find out more about Wii Party soon (hopefully including its North American release date), with E3 kicking off in less than two weeks.
