Just in case your Wii Sports baseball is starting to lose its luster, Nintendo has decided to bring you yet another iteration of their top-selling Mario branded sports line up with Mario Super Sluggers for the Wii. The game will no doubt feature the Wii motion controls for the bat and ball interfaces as well as the expected cast of characters that spans pretty much every Nintendo franchise you can think of.

Per the press release, the game will land “later this year”. That’s a pretty vague window, and given Nintendo’s track record of delays (along with the fact that just a handful of screenshots have seen the light of day) I’ll go out on a limb and assume that it will be pushed to somewhere in 2009. Hopefully it’ll be worth the wait, NOA’s VP of Sales Cammie Dunaway sure thinks so, “Mario is truly a one-of-a-kind character; clearly fans can’t get enough of him and his friends,” she continues, “We’re giving Wii users brilliant new ways to enjoy him while expanding our series of active-play games.”

Hmm, perhaps, but maybe the big N needs to start focusing on *gasp* new IP’s? I mean everyone knows that the Mario games are what sells, but eventually people will stop buying the same thing over and over for each Nintendo system that comes out… I hope. They’ve obviously got some creative minds on their side and I just think it would be pretty cool to see what could happen if those minds were given the chance to create something totally new. Not a remake, not a re-imagining, not an update, NEW. While I doubt that will actually happen, it’s always nice to have something to wish for, right?