Contrary to what was previously believed, Legend of Zelda for Wii U will not be released in 2015, and in fact won't even make a showing at the E3 game expo in June.
The delay was announced by Legend of Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma in a video message on Facebook.
"I must apologize to you all that were expecting the game by year's end, but we are no longer making a 2015 release our number one priority," said Aonuma in the video. "Instead, our priority is to make it the most complete and ultimate Zelda game."
There are a number of reasons for the delay of the release of the game. While Some might be frustrated at the news, the fact that Nintendo wants to focus on developing the best game possible rather than developing a game to be released as soon as possible is a good decision. There's no use releasing a game that is not the best that it could be.
"As we have worked to turn these possibilities into reality, new ideas have continued to spring forth, and it now feels like we have the potential to create something that exceeds even my own expectations," said Aonuma. "As I have watched our development progress, I have come to think that rather than work with meeting a specific schedule as our main objective, and releasing a game that reflects only what we can create within that scheduled time, I feel strongly that our focus should be to bring all these ideas to life in a way that will make The Legend of Zelda on Wii U the best game it can possibly be."
The news that the game will not even be showed off at E3 is certainly surprising, and shows just how behind Nintendo is in the development of the game. Developers often turn to E3 to show off their upcoming games and to drum up buzz about those games.
The news comes shortly after it was announced that the much-speculated Legend of Zelda TV show was perhaps not in development after all. While nothing is certain, Nintendo boss Saturo Iwata expressed that the rumors that a TV show is being developed are at least not based on true information.
The next Legend of Zelda game could be extremely important for Nintendo, which is starting to seem a little behind the times. The Wii U did not sell as much as Nintendo might have liked, and many have been calling on the company to enter the mobile game industry.
