GDC: Miyamoto confirms Mario Galaxy for 2007

Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto has confirmed in his GDC keynote that the next Super Mario title, Super Mario Galaxy, will be appearing on the Wii before the end of 2007.

At the end of a largely announcement-free speech, Miyamoto showed a new trailer for the game and told the audience in San Francisco that they would be playing the game later this year.

In contrast to Sony's keynote yesterday, however, Nintendo did not reveal any details of new games or services in its presentation - with the exception of a casual mention of a forthcoming overhaul of the Mii avatar system on the Wii, which will see new functionality for comparing avatars and entering contests being added.

It's speculated that the Japanese firm had its hands tied in terms of new announcements due to a major forthcoming transaction in the company's stock; Nikkei trading rules heavily restrict Nintendo's ability to make statements which could affect its share price during this period.

However, it's entirely possible that Miyamoto had never intended to make any major announcements in San Francisco - since many previous Nintendo keynotes at GDC have focused more on personal philosophies on game development, anecdotes about Nintendo's own development process and discussion about the reasons behind certain strategic decisions.

Miyamoto's keynote this year was a very personal look at his game design philosophies. He spoke at length about his delight at seeing his wife begin to embrace gaming, joking that he measures Nintendo's success at breaking into the mass market on the "Wife-O-Meter", and explained some of the process which led to the creation of the Wiimote controller, confirming that Nintendo's software teams worked closely with the hardware division on the design.

He also touched briefly on the GameCube, describing the firm's previous console as a "half-step" towards an expanded audience, but stating that the console didn't go far enough towards that goal. "In the end, I think this controller was still too complicated [for non-gamers]," he commented.