"Zelda needs at the very least come back to a two to two and a half years long development cycle."

Is 2D Zelda an alternative?

gumby_trucker said: To summarize: thread title is needlessly sensational in order to attract viewers - IGN would be proud

The post was great.

the quoted part a low low blow ^^

Zelda games always took a lot of time and people to develop, nothing new. This kind of games is one of the reasons many still believes in Nintendo quality.

Ocarina of Time has a long development, too. And was worth? Yes. Not only for gamers, but also for the company itself 'cause they have a base for future games (MM, TWW, TP). That's what they want to do, create a new base for future games.

Skyward Sword will be different (at least is what they want to do) and maybe the next games will be like this one.

BTW, I'm interest to know what "could have be done" with those resources as you pointed on the OP.

Ok, i heard of this "without Motion Plus", but hey, would YOU prefer a Zelda-Waggle game? Honestly, I think Ninty made many half-baked games this gen. just look at Wii-Play-Motion, even from a shareholder point of view that doesn't make sense anymore.

Give us the "Ninty-Seal-of-Quality" back, even if it takes years. And this comes from a Wii-/Ninty-defense-force type of gamer.

I knew you wouldn't give it up! You can't.

Nevertheless: "I'm your biggest fan i follow you until you love me, Rol! lol!"

Really, i like your stubbornness! I think you would even try to "win" a debate, although the opinion your fighting for is the contrary of what your thinking. I'm with you!

Best regards! And one more time i'll give it up.

I agree, it's been really disappointing waiting for this one game for so long, it was *supposed to* be released by the end of 2010, then it was set for early 2011, now nobody's got a clue. The worst part is having zero good Wii games released from them or third parties in the meantime

That's why, for the first time in my life, I bought a second console in the same gen. I bought a PS3 about a month ago, I have a whole library of already released games now so no more waiting

I wish they would have used just a few of those Zelda team people to localized Xenoblade, I'd have been ok with that for a long time, I heard it's a really huge RPG. They'd have saved me a whole bunch of money that I was planning to buy a 3DS with :(

@Rol
Frankly, I think this is less an issue related to Zelda and more about the particular people working on it. Aonuma is understandably tired of investing so many years into these games. If the man had it his way he would be making an online competitive shooter after TP - how about that for new IP from Nintendo?

Hopefully they let him loose after this game, since they have brought in quite a lot of new staff for SS, including people who used to work for Capcom and produced Minish Cap etc. Maybe such a transition in staff (not to mention the huge changes Zelda has gone through with this game) is also part of the reason the game took so long.

The fact that Aonuma - which is a top level designer at Nintendo - can't produce a single game in recent years without Miyamoto seriously intervening with the process says something is not 100% right over there. I don't know if this comes down to Aonuma's skills, or perhaps Miyamoto's needlessly controlling work ethic, but something there needs to change and I'm not sure it would have been any better if the same people were working on a different game.

Hell, Cuthbert was (and still is) a very good game designer, and look what Nintendo did to his series?? Just another example of how development seems to be quite unbalanced at the company at times...

This has been happening since n64. No/poor 3rd party support equals barren periods on nintendo consoles.

Aonuma was also the director of Majora's Mask; I don't know that removing him from future Zelda projects is necessarily a good thing.

Remember that Nintendo has a lot of first and second party studios.  As you mentioned, perhaps better management of said resources are needed.  Outsourcing things like graphic textures or even the story elements you mentioned while EAD 3 worked on the core elements would cut down dev time while maintaining the quality we all expect from a Zelda game.

The last thing I would want is to somehow compromise one project (particularly Zelda) in order to squeeze out more games that may or may not sell better.  It's true that sales of say, Twilight Princess, are laughable compared to Wii Sports Resort or Wii Play, but there are also major under-performers like Wii Music as well.

I realize your intent isn't to suggest that Nintendo go with making nothing but Wii ____ games over and over, but think about the fact that 13 years from now, many of the current hottest sellers will be nothing more than a fleeting memory while things like OoT find new life on new systems because of their timeless quality.

Aonuma wanted to make an online sequel to Link's Crossbow Training but was told to concentrate on Zelda.

http://www.1up.com/news/aonuma-wanted-link-crossbow-training

"In an interview with gamesTM magazine (via NowGamer), Aonuma revealed his real interest in making the next Zelda title was to create a sequel to the Wii Zapper pack-in game.

"To tell you the truth, I actually wanted to create Link's Crossbow Training 2," Aonuma said. "I thought that we should do something more and better in the field of the first person shooter, based on our experience of the first game. For example, I was thinking that maybe we could intensify the multiplayer mode. The original game was really just a solo game but I thought that we could add a true multiplayer mode with multiple users playing together, from remote areas, over the Wi-Fi Connection."

So why aren't we anticipating a new online multiplayer Zelda crossbow FPS right now? ecause Nintendo higher-ups (mercifully?) shot Aonuma's idea down. "The fact of the matter is that a lot of people inside Nintendo insisted that I should work on a new Legend Of Zelda title rather than working on more Crossbow Training," Aonuma said."

If you also read up on the development of the original Crossbow Training, it's known that the team actually wanted to make a much more epic and exciting game, being Nintendo's first entry into the FPS genre, but was shot down by Miyamoto who told them to concentrate on a "non-epic side story to TP" and also to have 3 minute long levels with no bosses at the end... I'm not saying which would have been better, just that there always seems to be a large amount of tension when it comes to franchises that are based on Miyamoto's imagination. Just like with SF, the guy needs to let go once in a while.

Regarding SF64, I thought it was said to be pretty much a remake of SF2 which was developed along with Cuthbert...

edit: after checking on that last one it turns out that only about 30% of SF64 is said to come from SF2 so maybe it doesn't matter. Still I should mention that it was Miyamoto's decision to cancel the game at the point where it was practically complete, in anticipation of the N64 (which eventually launched a whole 18 months after the game was complete...) and not because of any issues with the game's quality.

What matters here is that there seems to be a constant state of disagreement between what developers want to work on and what the management at Nintendo thinks they should work on. Just like in any other company, sometimes this tension turns out for the better, sometimes it turns out for the worse...   

The lack of games was a combination of many things... not just Zelda.

New consoles. Yes plural. It takes a couple years for any game at least. So they have people testing game ideas for 3D and the new WiiU controller for years before they launch (which reduces available talent on other game creations and then they start on actual games for each system.

Zelda is one of their staple franchises. It has to be a AAA team with large support to be created. Just like eventual main Super Mario games. Plus with no other 'big' franchise coming up soon, Zelda had to be pushed along to fill the void. I'm betting it was originally planned for early 2011 or xmas 2010, but later pushed back as Nintendo likes to ensure games are polished to perfection first. Had it launched on time, there would be no big issue.