Well, that’s a one-two punch for the Wii U: Nintendo said today that its highly anticipated new Legend of Zelda game won’t make its planned 2015 release date, and in case that wasn’t enough, the game won’t even be shown at this year’s E3 Expo in June.
Zelda was set to be the tentpole release for the beleaguered Wii U console this year, so its loss is a pretty massive blow to Nintendo’s holiday lineup. Then again, if you didn’t see this one coming a mile away, you haven’t been paying attention: Nintendo regularly delays its games, especially when said game is a new entry in the Zelda series. (I laid down my marker on this the minute Nintendo announced the game’s release date, by the way.)
And this one in particular is maybe the most ambitious Zelda game the team’s ever done, since it’s the first to take place in a massive open world. The chances that Nintendo would either run into development snags—or simply discover new ideas that they want to implement—were very high.
That seems to have been the case, at least in part: Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma said, in a video update announcing the delay, that “as the team has experienced firsthand the freedom of exploration that hasn’t existed in any Zelda game to date, we have discovered several new possibilities for the game.” Implementing those, he said, is the reason for the delay.
Nintendo isn’t the only console maker to delay Christmas this year: Earlier this month, Sony said that Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End wouldn’t be out on PlayStation 4 until 2016.
The loss of Zelda is a fairly heavy blow to Wii U’s outlook for the year. With third party software publishers not releasing much of note on the platform, it’s been up to Nintendo to carry most of the weight. Besides Zelda, it still currently plans to release Mario Maker, Star Fox, Yoshi’s Woolly World and Xenoblade Chronicles X this year.
But there is a bright spot: In addition to its penchant for delaying its big games, Nintendo also often announces big games mere months before it ships them. So hopefully Zelda‘s absence from E3 means more game announcements for 2015 to fill in the void it’s leaving behind.
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