September 12th, 2010

Leaked: Nintendo 3DS to be released on November 20th?

72 Comments

A Japanese product designer has tweeted that:

> “On November 20th, the 11 goods I designed for use with the 3DS will go on sale simultaneously. Those of you buying the 3DS, please buy them while you’re at it! This will be officially announced on the homepage eventually, lol. Best regards.”

The designer appears to work with keysfactory, a company that manufactures accessories for Nintendo DS consoles such as screen guards, cases and chargers (view their catalogue). The tweet itself has since been deleted and replaced with a much more vague tweet that reads:

> “OIRA is designed to place 20 11 11 3DS product will be released simultaneously for the product.”

The common thread, however, is the use of the word simultaneously. Clearly, he believes the products he’s designed will be available at the launch of the 3DS. It would be fairly strange to make a mistake of when his own products were going to be released.

What do you think? A mid-November release date would be consistent with previous rumours and, based on Nintendo’s scheduling of events (with the release date and price being announced on September 29th), it’s not particularly farfetched. Is this a genuine leak, or merely a bizarre slip of the tongue?

**Update**: As WildDown, a Japanese reader points out, this release date would tie in with Nintendo’s previous launch days. Here’s what he had to say:

  • Wii 2006/12/2 (Saturday)
  • DSi 2008/11/1 (Saturday)
  • DSiXL 2009/11/21 (Saturday)

…and 3DS will be put on the market … in 2010/11/20 (Saturday) ??? I think that the possibility is high.