‘The Legend of Zelda’ for Wii U isn’t listed in Nintendo’s 2016 Release Calendar
Son of a bitch. Like, the game that I’m sweating for the Wii U isn’t going to hit the system. Is it? It isn’t. I can sense it. Nintendo’s already run public post-mortems on the console and shit. And now Legend of LinkLinkZeldaTime Wii U ain’t on the calendar for next year. Which means, as far as my detective skills tell me, that the title is actually going to drop for the Nintendo NX or whatever.
If you look over the Nintendo financial report [PDF], you will see the firm’s first-party and third-party release schedule. There aren’t any surprising dates listed, other than The Legend of Zelda Wii U.
The first-party release schedule contains a few 2016 release windows for games such Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, and a couple of others.
The Legend of Zelda is listed underneath the 2016 releases, as TBD along with Project Giant Robot.
While this doesn’t necessarily mean the latest Link game has been pushed into 2017 or later, it’s rather disconcerting to see it listed as “TBD”. Should the game be pushed into 2017, it’s possible producer Eiji Aonuma and his team are planning to release it on Nintendo NX instead of Wii U.
Of course, this is all conjecture, so keep that in mind.
Aonuma said previously rather than meeting a specific schedule for the game, the team wants the next entry in the franchise to be a “complete and ultimate Zelda game.” The added time will be used to create a game which will reward fans for their patience.
Zelda fans want the next console game in the series to be great, so for many of us, we’ll be content to wait as long as it takes.