Bowser chases Samus Aran in Super Smash Bros. Brawl for Wii

In politics and business, Public Relations 101 dictates that bad news is announced on a Friday afternoon, whenever possible, to minimize the amount of damage that must be controlled. For Nintendo, it seems that a week or two before E3 is its chosen time to release less-than-optimal information, to set expectations, to prevent any ill winds from blowing through the legendarily clockwork operation that is its annual E3 press conference. Last year, on April 27th, 12 days before its E3 briefing, Nintendo announced that its Revolution console would no longer be known by its previous aggressive code name. Instead, we were now to refer to it by its kinder, gentler, stranger and eminenently more mockable final name: Wii. (By contrast, Sony saved its own bad news--the shock and awe of the PS3's staggeringly high price points--for the conclusion of its E3 press conference, violating the dictum to send 'em out on a high note. The results were rather predictable.)

At the time the Wii name was unveiled, Internet forums and message boards were choked with the gnashing of teeth and the rending of garments as long-suffering Nintendo fanboys, forced to absorb the ridicule of PlayStation and Xbox partisans, and resigning themselves to seeing their adored Kyoto standard-bearer slide further into irrelevance. Today, it is the PS3 fan who gently weeps. It is the Xbox 360 aficionado who alternates between the bravado of the front-runner and the abject terror at the possibility inevitability that the dreaded "Red Ring of Death" will claim his beloved white chill box. (Hey, things break, right?) And it is the Nintendo stalwart, he or she who stuck by the company through its downward spiral--we speak here of market share and cultural relevance--who now chortles as the Wii displays more momentum than Barack Obama; while Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime shrugs at his rivals' woes as if to say, "Not my problem;" as all-smiles GIFs of Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata and design legend Shigeru Miyamoto under the banner "It Prints Money!!!" proliferate throughout the interwebs. What a difference a year makes.

Two days ago, Nintendo went back to its damage control playbook, first announcing that Super Smash Bros. Brawl would not be playable at next week's E3 Media & Business Summit. Given Nintendo's penchant for unapologetically slipping its software Until It's Done, you might think that we hardened, cynical journalists might be more skeptical about whether it would ship this year at all. In fact, said scribes leapt to Ninty's defense, wielding Golin Harris-scripted talking points like a Wii remote in that tantalizing-yet-invisible Lucasarts lightsaber game. More problematic, however, was the unwelcome revelation that Metroid Prime 3: Corruption would not feature online play, a staple of first-person shooters on rival machines. While the game's lack of online multiplayer has an upside--gamers will now be spared the ordeal of entering multiple sixteen-digit Friend Codes in order to do battle with their fellow Metroid Primates--its absence from Nintendo's flagship FPS necessarily calls into question the company's commitment to online as anything other than a reverse-ATM, inhaling money from the all too-willing consumers of its for-fee downloadable games. Still, Nintendo will likely achieve its desired result, clearing the decks for another show-stopping press conference in its seemingly inexorable march toward you're-the-man-now-dog status. And when the old tricks work this well, there's no need to learn any new ones.