Amazon Pre-Order Emails Claim Zelda Wii U: 2017, NX Involved?

[greenmedic88]

That's not great news although it would parallel the development of Twilight Princess, which was originally a Gamecube title that became an 11th hour dual platform release.

The circumstances are pretty similar so it shouldn't come as a surprise.

The Gamecube largely underperformed relative to expectations, leaving it with a smaller than estimated install base at the time development began. Twilight Princess' development pipeline was timed to take advantage of what was estimated to be a larger install base. The decision (and the right decision in retrospect) was made to release it simultaneously on the new Wii platform and as a result, millions more copies were sold.

Given the install base of the Wii U, it would make sense to make the new Zelda available to the largest possible audience while supporting the launch of a new platform. This is what we saw with a significant number of major 3rd party titles on the PS4 and XBO.

The only problem is the release date. Nintendo wouldn't release such a major title immediately after the holiday season, which is their strongest quarter for sales.

The obvious time to do a dual platform release would be with the debut of the NX in the 3rd quarter of 2016. 2017 is really stretching out the development, but 2016 could be too early for a new hardware platform, depending on what Nintendo has in the works. If it's an evolutionary platform like the New 3DS, sure. If it ditches the PPC architecture and moves to a SoC based system like the PS4 and XBO, that seems a bit soon.

Nintendo will want to market the NX as an all new platform to settle any doubt or confusion as was seen with the Wii U. In that respect, a dual platform release would be counterintuitive, but this didn't didn't effect sales of the Wii, not that this was difficult considering the general consumer had already forgotten the GC.

This could easily go either way, depending on what Nintendo has in store for the NX and its ambitions.