Japanese 3DS Release Date Revealed?

Sleuths over at NeoGAF may have caught a gaff of their own, capturing a tweet by product designer Takahiro Amano from the Japanese peripheral maker KeyFactory. Last night Amano shared his excitement about several of his projects, which he described as going on sale November 20 simultaneously with the Nintendo 3DS launch in Japan.

A translation of the screen capture can be found below, in its original state and after it was changed to something significantly less revealing.

Original Tweet: “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.”

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

Kotaku followed up with KeysFactory and confirmed that Amano was indeed an employee, but that he left the company in August. They also claim that they are not aware of the pending Nintendo 3DS release date.

Tweets are hardly a solid news source, but the story is still an interesting one. Nintendo has been very tight-lipped about when the 3DS will release, promising that it will hit retails sometime before April 11, 2011. They have, however, chosen a date to reveal the release date, which is September 29.

The window between November and April is a large one. While we would love to see the 3DS at retail before the holidays hit, we’re not sure if it’s in the cards. Aside from a few gems, hands-on time at E3 showcased little more than proof-of-concept demos and makes us think back to the original Nintendo DS launch. If the release was rushed, would the software live up to our expectations?

For now, it looks like we’ll have to wait till the end of the month for some solid news.