So Nintendo delayed Zelda Wii U—and the Nintendo NX with it—until May 2017. It’s a major move, and a very serious one, since it means that Nintendo doesn’t really have any flagship games coming out for its Wii U console this holiday season. And it didn’t have any games like that last year either. That means that there’s a truly immense amount of pressure on Zelda Wii U to be successful. And soon we’ll get an inkling as to whether it will be, because Nintendo is going to show off the game at E3 2016. It better deliver. It better be freaking amazing.
Zelda Wii U Has To Amp Up The Hype
The news that Zelda Wii U would release for the Nintendo NX came as no surprise. The news that both the game and the console were being pushed to March 2017, missing the holiday season entirely, was. It leaves Nintendo’s holiday season 2016 utterly bereft on the console side. Pokémon Sun and Moon are going to have to basically carry the company’s fiscal year, which ends in March around the launch of the Nintendo NX. That’s tough sledding. And then the Nintendo NX needs to have a strong launch in a non-holiday season, which is a tall order indeed.
That’s why so much is riding on The Legend of Zelda, formerly (and still) Zelda Wii U. The NX version of the title needs to sell literally millions of systems for the Nintendo NX to have a fighting chance. And we’ll see the game for the first time in years, and play it for the first time ever, at E3 2016. It’s going to be Nintendo’s only playable game at E3 2016.
That is a major endorsement—or a major act of desperation—on Nintendo’s part. It’s not going to hype us up for other unreleased titles. Zelda NX is the biggest project Nintendo has ever done and Nintendo is betting the farm on it, so the game really needs to be amazing. Zelda Wii U not only has to compete with other Zelda titles but with games like Skyrim, Witcher 3 and Fallout 4. And Nintendo knows that. By betting it all on the game at E3 2016, Nintendo is daring us to say that the new Zelda game isn’t the best one ever. Let’s hope it lives up to Nintendo’s own standards.
