And about Monolithsoft's game "X" or whatever, no just because it has optional online co-op doesn't mean it's "taking on" Monster Hunter - notice the character cameo at the end? this will almost certainly have a character driven story as well as imaginative lore and world design as we've come to expected from Tetsuya Takahashi and Monolithsoft. Looks like it will will bring over a lot of what I liked about Xenoblade, but i like the art MUCH better here, plus mechs should help with traveling and add more to the battle system, really excited to see more of this.

"Does a new Smash Bros. have much appeal beyond the requisite roster update?"

Yeah you could have said the same thing about the last 2 entries but then you guys ended up lavishing praise on those games with increasingly higher scores.

It seems so hypocritical; my main takeaway personaly from the wii u direct was Platinum's game, Wonderful 101, and Monolith's new game, "X" and yet when I look at your promo for your article on the direct all I see is Yoshi, Zelda and Mario Kart! Despite the fact that all that there was for Yoshi was an extremely barren non gameplay clip, for wind waker nothing but concept art looking shots and for mario kart literally nothing. Meanwhile Wonderful 101 had a full fledge gameplay trailer with awesome looking boss battles [and Platinum has always been great with gameplay] and then X which also had a full fledged gameplay trailer [and no it's NOT like monster hunter.] And yet your articles only passingly mentions these fresh games, instead focusing on the typical mario zelda stuff we know nothing about. And you could at least *mention* Bayonetta 2 and the SMT/Fire Emblem RPG in this article.

Yeah, I see a valid point in your article, Nintendo's kinda stuck here but you guys actively contribute to the problem. You ask Nintendo to put some faith in their "new franchises" when you guys clearly don't put any yourself.

Guys, don't trust the gamespot editors when it comes to news - at least with Nintendo stuff. Just read the press release yourself: "'Nintendo 3DS'(temp) is going to be the new portable game machine to succeed 'Nintendo DS series...'" It's supposed to succeed the DS series, not be part of it. There were actually also several notable rumors from GDC that were/are worth commenting on and put the announcement into perspective - I obviously knew these guys would be out of the loop with that stuff. I at least expected them to be able to read the press release properly though. I wish they would understand how bad they screwed up.