When Nintendo announced that the upcoming Zelda game for the Wii U and NX was the only game being demoed at E3 2016, the gaming community was perplexed, to say the least.
With the NX confirmed by Nintendo months prior, even with its March 2017 release date , the company could have used the time to get the community hyped for the future of the beloved video game company. But as Charlie Scibetta, senior director of corporate communications for Nintendo of America told iDigitalTimes, Nintendo’s plan for E3 2016 was a calculated risk that began with managing the community’s expectations.
“If we had not said anything before the show and we just had Zelda some might have been happy and others would be confused and asking where the other games are,” Scibetta said. “So I think we were able to calibrate the expectations of people coming in so they knew this was what they should expect. And when they got here, the payoff was a lot better than they thought.”
A large part of that payoff was the giant Legend of Zelda booth that was erected in the West Hall of the Los Angeles Convention Center. Attendees were treated to a tour through a scale-model environment based on the land in Breath of the Wild. The statues of Bokoblins, campfires and Link himself were to scale, with the enclosed booth having a simulated day-night cycle.
“Each year we look at what we want to communicate at the show and the best way to do that. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is what fans wanted to know more about,” Scibetta said. “We are excited about it, we announced that it’s coming out for the Wii U and NX at the same time in 2017 so we are showing the Wii U version here and we created a booth experience that is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. And by having just one game we had the freedom to create the booth to the specifications of that game.”
The Zelda booth at E3 was the talk of the expo and the gameplay for Breath of the Wild has a lot of people talking as well. But there still was the noticeable absence of the NX at the show, and with it a lack of answers about the future of Nintendo consoles.
Scibetta attributes the NX’s absence at E3 2016 to timing.
“When it comes to going more in-depth about NX we decided to have that closer to the ship date, so sometime between now and then we will start rolling out more information. But for this show, we really wanted to focus on this one game and build the best experience for that,” Scibetta told iDigi. “In terms of why we did that and our thought process, for this show for this game we wanted to to go big on [ Zelda ]. And for NX we’ll talk about that in other ways as we get closer to launch, it just wasn't going to be at this show for us.”
Without the NX present at E3 2016, Nintendo has taken a lot of criticism for its seemingly lackluster content (a fact that Scibetta admits Nintendo is aware of). The Nintendo Wii U’s failure to repeat the success of the Wii has also caused fans to become impatient with the company. If Zelda’s presence at this year’s E3 didn’t go off without a hitch, the company could have seen major repercussions, but it was a risk Scibetta says was worth it.
“We made a big bet on this game for the show. When you only have one game in your booth, you’re basically going all in on this game,” Scibetta said. “And I think history will judge companies and games that make a bet, that take a calculated risk and decide that we’re going to get behind a certain game or initiative or showing like a title like this. [History] looks favorably on things when it hits and the reverse can also be true. If the reaction had not been good for the game it would have been a bad E3 for us but it’s turned into a great E3 for us because the booth is great, people like the game so we feel we made the right decision.”
