Matt responds: This is going pretty far back. I wrote an article at E3 2003 about it, actually. Basically, Shigeru Miyamoto took the stage and waxed on about Nintendo's relationship with Factor 5. He proudly showed off the graphically impressive shooter Star Wars Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike and then said that Factor 5 and Nintendo were working closely together on another exclusive title for GameCube, which would be revealed at a later date. Meanwhile, I had heard and confirmed just a couple days before the event that the title in question was in fact an update to the Pilotwings franchise. As time passed, I was able to talk with some of the folks on the development side and they told me that any such title would in fact not make it out for GameCube -- that instead it was being prepped for Nintendo's next-generation console.
Still with me? Good. There's a little more.
Turns out that somewhere between then and now Nintendo decided to make the Revolution something dramatically different than it had originally intended -- a machine that doesn't quite follow the same structure as those from competitors Microsoft and Sony. Although Factor 5 enjoyed a good relationship with the Big N, it has always been a very tech-savvy company, and I assume that when it learned that technology would be downplayed in Revolution, it got a little freaked out and started to evaluate other options. Meanwhile, in typical form, Nintendo wasn't exactly forthcoming or very helpful in any collaborative effort, preferring to keep every fact of its new hardware top secret, even as specs and details from the other systems began to spill out.
So to make a long story a little shorter, Factor 5 jumped ship. It's now developing games exclusive for PlayStation 3 and so obviously it won't be making any Pilotwings title for Revolution. I have no idea if legitimate work was ever really done on the now-defunct project, nor do I know if Nintendo has since assigned it to another developer. So for now, we have it listed as TBA until we hear something, one way or the other. I wouldn't hold my breath for it just yet.
