Game industry executives often say things that come back to haunt them. Playstation studio chief Phil Harrison once stated that dual SKUs are a bad idea. "I think it just confuses the audience," he said at Game Developers Conference Europe 2005. "They don't know which one to buy, developers don't know which one to create for, and retailers don't know which one to stock-.I think we wouldn't take that strategy. We wouldn't create confusion." Then head honcho Ken Kutaragi announced two PS3 models at E3 2006. Whoops. Microsoft games studio boss Shane Kim said "We're going to have 10 million units in consumers' hands before the competitor even ships unit one." We're not sure which competitor he was referring to, but it couldn't have been Sony or Nintendo, seeing as there aren't even 10 million units in consumers' hands today. Good thing he didn't make a wager on achieving that milestone.

Definitive statements, it seems, are a platform-holder's Waterloo. But when Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime willingly--nay, forcefully--accepted our "Read My Lips" challenge regarding the company's notorious software droughts, we felt that in order to make such a bold statement, he must have excellent visibility into the progress of the various games under development at his studios. Thus, we let the back-and-forth debate conclude, as gentlemen must, and simply promised to check back with him upon the games' actual ship dates.

You can imagine, therefore, our total lack of surprise to see key titles missing from Nintendo's just-announced first quarter release schedule. Game|Life's Chris Kohler points out that Mario Party 8, previously announced for Q1, was nowhere to be found. Even more intriguing was the complete absence of the first-person shooter Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. You may recall that Fils-Aime told Level Up, "That title is going to come out early in 2007." To paraphrase another president, we guess it depends on what the meaning of "early" is. He went on to say, "[Metroid Prime 3] will give us fantastic momentum coming off of the launch, and will certainly be an example of how there will be no new game drought for this system." Well, it's certainly an example of something all too familiar. Fortunately for Fils-Aime, he isn't running for office next fall. Because otherwise, he'd have some 'splainin' to do.