Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games (or M&SatOWG I guess) has has a US and UK release date announced of October 13 and 16 respectively. Coming to Wii and DS, the release will precede the 21st Winter Games to be held in Vancouver in February 2010. No New Zealand release date announced yet, but this should merely be a formality given that the original Beijing Games title released in a narrow window worldwide.

Supporting the Wii Balance Board, the game includes events such as snowboard cross, alpine skiing, figure skating, bobsleigh and ice hockey. Multiplayer is a given, but no word on any Wi-Fi support, and also sadly no mention of MotionPlus support. Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games sold over 10 million combined Wii and DS units, so Sega and Nintendo will be banking on this ringing the tills this Christmas (only 164 sleeps left!).

Update: New Zealand release has been set for the 15th of October.

Those of you that don’t have a DS (shame on you!) will have fingers crossed that the following statement from the technical director of the game means that this hotly anticipated title may just make it to other platforms:

VG247: Is there any chance of this ever coming to other platforms? It would work well on PC, for example.

Marius Fahlbusch: Unfortunately, I cannot comment on it at this point. But the concept would definitely work on other platforms as well and we’ve seen gamers from very different backgrounds pick it up and enjoy it equally.

Brian will be attending a preview evening soon for the game and will be able to offer us an insight into how badly you are going to want this game to be coming to a platform near you.

via VG247

Carcassonne, the medieval tile board game given away to Xbox LIVE members as part of the "LIVE is 5IVE" promotion in 2007, is on its way to the DS. It will come with the "River" expansion set, but to the disappointment of many fans there has been no mention made of any other expansion sets included, and as we know that is not something that can be later patched or added via DLC to the DS.

Multiplayer has will be available sharing a single DS console, or multi-cart link, but no mention has been made of singl-cart play or WiFi connection play. The game is due to release sometime later this year.