Brawl was personally announced at a pre-E3 press conference by Satoru Iwata.[9] Later that night, the director of the previous two games in the Smash Bros. series, Masahiro Sakurai, was asked to be the director of the third installment, and he accepted.[10] When development of the game began in October 2005,[11] Nintendo had enlisted the help of various outside developers in an office in Tokyo exclusively for Brawl's development. At E3 2007, Nintendo of America's president, Reggie Fils-Aime, stated that Brawl would be released on December 3, 2007 in the Americas.[12] The date would later be delayed to February 10, 2008[13] and then again to March 9, 2008[14] when the game was finally released.