| Cheebee said: IF Zelda U releases by Q4 2016, which remains to be seen as it could easily slip well into 2016, then yes, it would have taken them 4 years. Actually, your 2nd paragraph isn't true at all. SS was Nintendo's biggest project ever, but considering the resources needed for HD development compared to SD development, even getting the game done in 1 year less would still cost a LOT more in terms of manpower and resources needed. Miyamoto himself has even confirmed their HD games take about twice the manpower needed for Wii games: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-07-05-miyamoto-we-underestimated-cost-of-hd-development Paying people for 5 years for SS, as opposed to paying twice the people for 4 years (minimum) for Zelda U. It's pretty clear which is more costly. And that's only the manpower, let alone the other resources needed; Zelda U looks set to be much, much bigger than SS ever was (which in all honesty wasn't very big at all, as most areas were re-used several times over the course of the game). Also, there is zero evidence supporting the notion that Nintendo had a strong idea of the direction they wanted to take the game/franchise in, and yes, they did have to desperately scramble to expand their teams for all their Wii U games, as Miyamoto and Iwata have stated on numerous occasions. |
But as I mentioned, Skyward Sword was not your average Wii game. Those first two years of work were almost entirely fruitless. It took them that long to figure out what direction they wanted to take with the game. They were paying their team that whole time. Then when they realized they had already spent too much time and money on the project, they started hiring more people to get it finished more quickly (probably in a race against the end of the Wii's life). Zelda U's dev team might -- might -- be twice the size of Skyward Sword's initial dev team during those first two years, but it would not be twice the size of Skyward Sword's much larger dev team from 2009-2011.
There is actually a lot of evidence indicating that Aonuma knew what he wanted to do with the next Zelda game soon after Skyward Sword was released, based on multiple interviews he has given during the past 2 years. In any case, there is certainly more evidence to support that notion than there is to support the notion that the game suffered similar development problems to Skyward Sword, as there is absolutely no evidence indicating that at all.
Miyamoto and Iwata have talked about having problems with HD development, but they never talked about that in the same sentence as Zelda. And the Zelda team got their experience with HD development from working on Wind Waker.
"After the Zelda team showed the Wii U Zelda demo at E3 2011, we continued to experiment with converting past Zelda art styles into HD as we continued to consider graphical styles for the new game." This game was in the planning stages before Skyward Sword even shipped. The Zelda team has had plenty of time to acclimate themselves to HD development. Given they have already released an HD game and are now working on their second one, I see no reason to doubt their proficiency in HD development.
And your very first sentence is ridiculous. Let's calculate the developments costs of this game working exclusively under the assumption that the company making it doesn't know as much about their development schedule as I do, and assume that the game will be pushed back by a full year because I have an inkling that it might be.
How about name a Wii U game that has been delayed by a full year? Xenoblade was pushed back from a vague '2014' window to a vague '2015' window, that's about it. If it comes out in the first half of 2015, I'd definitely say it was pushed back less than a full year.
