At this rate, Zelda X will arrive in 2021

[Jon-Erich]

curl-6 said:

Jon-Erich said:

The 6th generation was a completely different story. Those games were easier to make back then and more affordable, at least compared to today. Not to mention they all used the same engine. This why during the 6th generation, you had many GTA clones. After the 6th generation, you stopped seeing the GTA clones because nobody could afford to make those kinds of games anymore. Just like GTA, the timespan between console Zelda games was also much shorter than today, even though Eiji Aonuma had those games go through delays.

With the 7th generation, they managed to squeeze out one more console GTA game right at the start of the 8th generation and it technically wasn't even finished at the time of it's release. It's kind of like how Nintendo managed to get Twilight Princess out at that exact moment when the 6th generation was coming to an end and the 7th generation was a in full gear. In fact, it's really the same thing. The time between the releases of GTA IV and GTA V was 5 years. The time between Skyward Sword and Zelda U will be 5 years.

While I loathe GTA, even I'll admit it is one of the most ambitious and elaborate games on the market. I hardly think Zelda needs as much development time as a modern GTA. 

Plenty of devs have managed to put out quality blockbuster games with 3 year development cycles. There are very, very few games that need 5 years, and Zelda is not one of them.

Zelda may not have the extensive voice acting and scripted story that GTA has but the games are still quite large and ambitious compared to most games. Again, how often do you see a game on the market that is anything like Zelda? A lot of publishers today deliberately avoid games like that. Then there's the issue of quality. Large games like that means that cleaning up bugs and glitches will take longer as the hardware becomes more sophisticated. Even after all of that, the occassional bug still gets past testing. Unlike your average publisher, Nintendo doesn't release unfinished games. They aren't a big fan of patching. So to put things in perspective, take something like Assassins Creed Unity and Battlefield 4 and estimate how long the initial development took. Then add in how many months it took to fix those games after their release. Then you'll get a true perspective on how long some of those games should take to develop.

Also keep in mind that the same Zelda team that makes the console games also makes the handheld games which are also becoming increasingly sophisticated. With something like Call of Duty or Assassins Creed, there's the console game. That's it. There is no portable games in between the console games and if their is, it's usually left in the hands of another developer. So the reality is that the Zelda team has been hard at work on several Zelda games over the last few years, one of them being the most sophisticated console Zelda game ever.