The translated story goes a little something like this. Apparently, a Nintendo rep was present at one of the events the french magazine was attending. After supplying copious amounts of Sake (an alcoholic drink), the guy hinted that the Wii would launch on October 30 in Japan, and hit stores in the US and Europe ten days later.

This flies in the face of what Nintendo have officially confirmed - that the Wii would have a simultaneous worldwide launch. Nintendo have said nothing about launching in Japan first, then everywhere else ten days later. So, we would take this news with an extra large grain of salt.

The french site also claims that the Wii launching before the PS3 is just a coincidence, albeit a great one for Nintendo. This is more believable, as Nintendo do have the attitude that they don't particularly care what the competition do, as their system is "new-gen", not "next-gen"! It would therefore make sense that they haven't been planning the launch of the Wii around the date for the PS3 launch. Even so, Nintendo would have been thrilled when Sony announced that the PS3 would launch after the Wii.

The determining factor for the Wii launch date will be finalizing the Wii-mote hardware, as this is the last thing Nintendo are working on. As we revealed in this news piece, Nintendo are still tweaking the controller. It is therefore highly possible that Nintendo themselves haven't set an exact release date yet!

We'll keep you up to date on all the rumours, speculation, and facts in the lead up to the Big N's big day.

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