Release This: Wario: The Burning Crusade

Gamasutra's regular round-up of worldwide video game releases, "Release This!", takes a look at every game title we know to be shipping to stores this week, in an exclusively compiled list. MMORPG fans in the United States and Europe are doubtlessly looking forward to this week in new releases, as January 15th marks the release of the anticipated World of Warcraft expansion pack The Burning Crusade. Gamers in the United States will also soon enjoy WarioWare: Smooth Moves and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice for All, while Japan prepares itself for awaited titles like .hack//G.U. Vol. 3: Aruku Youna Hayasa de and Gears of War. This week also introduces the listing of Mindshare data for upcoming U.S. releases, courtesy of IGN's GamerMetrics data, which tracks the relative share of awareness and purchase intent generated by a specific title on IGN.com. For the "IGN GamerMetrics Most Anticipated New Releases," Mindshare is relative to all titles scheduled to launch during the specified week, and is based on 90 days of IGN.com data leading up to the week of launch. The following list covers all of the game software we know to be available -- across all platforms and regions -- for the week ending January 20, 2007. Games Released in the United States: Games Released in Europe: WarioWare: Smooth Moves leads as this week's most anticipated title across all platforms in the United States, according to GamerMetrics's Mindshare data collected over the last three months. Smooth Moves, a Nintendo-published collection of fast-paced minigames, has been cited by many gamers as one of their most awaited Wii titles since the console's launch in November. Trailing close behind with 30.94% of this week's Mindshare is the MMORPG expansion pack World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. (The Burning Crusade also has the distinction of being the only game that will be released in Europe this week.) New releases will be similarly sparse for the UK throughout the rest of January, though February already looks to offer a much greater selection of upcoming titles. Games Released in Japan: Along with Smooth Moves in the U.S., Wario will also make an appearance in Japan this week with Kaitou Wario the Seven, the first new side-scrolling platformer the Wario series has seen since the 2001 release of Wario Land 4 for the Game Boy Advance. Other anticipated releases include a localized version of the best-selling Xbox 360 FPS Gears of War, along with .hack//G.U. Vol. 3: Aruku Youna Hayasa de, which will serve as the concluding chapter in the popular .hack//G.U. RPG trilogy. [About IGN GamerMetrics: IGN GamerMetrics is a tool designed to report the real-time behavior and interests of visitors to IGN Entertainment's network of gaming enthusiast web sites, showing the levels of consumer awareness, engagement, and purchase intent in every video game title released in the U.S. market.]