UPDATE: Harvest Moon: The Tale of Two Towns will now be released this November 1st for the 3DS.
ORIGINAL STORY: It’s no secret that the 3DS has been hurting in sales, especially in North America, and they have been trying to gain more ground by dropping the price significantly. This, according to a Natsume Representative is one of the reasons why Natsume, developer and publisher of the popular Harvest Moon series, has decided to delay both Gabrielle’s Ghostly Groove and Harvest Moon: The Tale of Two Towns until October.
Though Gabrielle’s Ghostly Groove is already available in Japan, and has been since July, it will miss it’s original North American date of August. Though October may also be a more befitting time to release this title, riddled with Halloween themes, and I am sure that will also push the sales up, as more people are likely to have a 3DS by then, due to the price drop.
Harvest Moon: The Tale of Two Towns is actually a 3DS, North American exclusive as the DS version is already out in Japan and the Western release of that will come this September. The 3DS version will come almost a month later on October 11, though it has no Halloween themes to take advantage of, but again Natsume is simply hoping that the 3DS has been heavily adopted by then.
I fear this is also the reason why many developers have had lackluster releases on the device, though it ends up being a chicken before the egg issues; if there are no good games then no one will buy the console, but if no one buys teh console then nobody wants to make good games.
I personally hope the sales of the 3DS pick up so some really blockbuster titles will come out next year.
originally posted Sept. 4.
