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Soundwave on 02 April 2026
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PAOerfulone said:
Soundwave said:

The elephant in the room is what's the commercial goal of this game?

Nintendo is a business not a hobbyist "do whatever kind of game you want!" club for game developers. The project likely first and foremost has to satisfy Nintendo's commercial needs, and that probably is this game needs to fill in for the fact that the Switch 2 didn't get a new Zelda game early in its product cycle like the Switch 1 did. They opted to let the Switch 1 have Tears of the Kingdom. This likely has to be the big holiday 2026 season and that's significant because the second holiday season is generally a very important one for a game console.

It has to accelerate Switch 2 sales.

A boring ass by the numbers remake I don't think is going to satisfy those needs and a port of the 3DS game would be an even bigger disaster. This has to be a big, big deal. Otherwise what exactly was their plan here? To have Mario Kart as the only real big ticket title for the first 2 holiday seasons? That doesn't seem to me like it makes any sense. Things like Metroid Prime and Donkey Kong Banaza are not A-tier IP for Nintendo, A-tier IP is Mario platformers, Mario Kart, Animal Crossing, new Pokemon, Smash Brothers, and 3D Zelda ... the Switch 1 had no less than *four* A-tier Nintendo IP releases (new 3D Zelda, Mario Kart 8 ... well this was on Wii U but most people didn't own a Wii U so it effectively was like a new game, Mario Odyssey, and then Smash Brothers Ultimate for holiday 2018).

I don't see how in planning the Switch 2 they would look at that and then say "yeah, we'll be OK with just Mario Kart for two holiday seasons. That isn't going to work.

Hey I'm more excited about Star Fox than GTAVI, but Star Fox is not going to sell systems, these are B/C/D tier Nintendo franchises, it's not 2006 either, Switch Sports is not selling a $450-$500 system in this day and age. I just don't think it makes any sense for this Zelda game to be anything less than a big ticket A-tier type release. 

It also just makes sense to split the Zelda into two branches now, original games and remake series (they can remake OoT, then Majora's Mask, then Twilight Princess using a "realistic" graphics engine same way Square-Enix is milking the FF7 Remakes). Original Zelda games take too long to make, waiting another 8 years from 2023 (so 2031?) for the next Zelda isn't workable when you have to sell new hardware. They need to have a way to get Zelda games out in 3-4 year cycles, the way to do that is exactly this ... have a team that works on big budget remakes, and then you can have the regular team too.

I've had the opinion for years now that they should have four different lines of Zelda games.

1) Original 2D Zelda (Link to the Past, Link's Awakening, Link Between Worlds, Oracle games, Echoes of Wisdom, etc.) Co-developed by Nintendo and GREZZO

2) Classic 3D Zelda (Ocarina of Time - Skyward Sword) - Co-developed by GREZZO and Tantalus with supervision and guidance from Nintendo

3) Modern Open World Zelda (Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom) Primarily Nintendo themselves w/ assistance from Monolith Soft and other partners

4) Spinoffs (Hyrule Warriors, Cadence of Hyrule, Link's Crossbow Training, etc.) Outsourced to 3rd parties.

I agree that they need to have branches of the other Zelda games to help keep the flow of games going in between those long, ever-growing, development cycles between the big Open World games. We're already coming up on three years after Tears of the Kingdom, and the next open world game in the lineup doesn't appear to be coming any time soon.

While I would still love an all-new classic 3D Zelda, if they're going to remake the old 3D Zeldas, then I'd be perfectly satisfied with that as well. And you're right, they can't just half-ass it or do a simple, by the numbers remake, they REALLY have to go big with it.

The worst actual scenario for Nintendo would be the Zelda movie comes out in May 2027 and is actually a big hit and then they're stuck holding their dick in their hand for 4+ years saying "just wait for the next Zelda game! It's coming! We promise it's coming".  

That would make releasing ToTK on Switch 1 a massive, massive mistake, they could have held off on that and retooled it for Switch 2's launch and in the end probably sold just as many copies (as it would've been a huge evergreen) but also sold Switch 2 systems to go with it. 

I think they only committed to that because they had this project in their back pocket already probably years ago. They announced the movie in 2023, they probably knew already by then they'd be making this game for this time period that lines up just before the movie releases.