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curl-6 on 03 October 2014
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the_dengle said:
curl-6 said:

You're putting words in my mouth. 

If they had given a 2016 window for Zelda, I would have believed them and not expected a delay, because that seems like a realistic target.

We haven't even seen gameplay footage yet, all we have seen is a single in-engine cutscene. We saw gameplay footage of Xenoblade Chronicles X, which is a similarly ambitious and demanding production, as early as January 2013, and it's likely coming out in late 2015.

The last two years have demonstrated that Nintendo's projected release dates are untrustworthy.

Then you still haven't listened to a word I've said. Zelda games have typical dev cycles of three years. None of Nintendo's Wii U games have been pushed back by more than six months. And you are saying you expect Zelda to experience a delay four times that length.

Nintendo can show us anything they want, they frequently show games for the very first time less than a year from release. They did that with Link Between Worlds just last year. Not all game reveals are created equally. Case in point, they flat-out confirmed that they didn't even have anything they could show of Star Fox, yet expect us to believe that's coming next year.

And in fact, they did show more of Zelda than a simple cutscene, because unless you believe that Aonuma has become a Peter Molyneux-tier liar over the years, they showed a massive piece of the game world laid out before you. They showed NPCs and in-game locations visible in the distance. And I can't believe I have to point this out, but it looked a hell of a lot more polished than Xenoblade X looked when they first showed that -- don't act surprised when I tell you that that's because Zelda was closer to release this past E3 than Xenoblade X was last January.

The typical dev cycle of an SD Zelda won't be the same as the typical dev cycle of a HD Zelda though.

And Nintendo could still delay less than six months and release it in Q1-Q2 2016, though I suspect if it doesn't make the window they'll still want to push it as a Christmas holiday game, and therefore hang onto it until November 2016.

For a game of this magnitude, I still don't think we've seen enough of it for it to be only a year away. Think of how much of Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword we'd seen 13 months out.