No. Outside of Ocarina of Time and Skyward Sword, the other games were ready in a more reasonable cycle (2-3 years).

That's not quite true, there are some games where the time between releases are quite long, at last 4 years, that is if we don't count spin offs, handhelds, or majora's mask, haha.

The Legend of Zelda - 1986

Zelda II - 1987 (1 year)

A Link to the Past - 1991 (5 years) (it was released at the end of the year while Zelda II at the beggining)

Ocarina of Time - 1998 (7 years) Two expansions were developed too: Zelda Ura and Zelda Gaiden

Majora's Mask - 2000 (2 years)

The Wind Waker - 2002 (2 years)

Twilight Princess - 2006 (4 years) This game was ready in 2005, and with development problems, so it was ready in 3 years.

Skyward Sword - 2011 (5 years) Monolith needed to come and help to develop it. Lanayru Area is Monolith's work.

Zelda HD - supposed to come this year (5 years) Some rumors or hints point that Monolith is again helping it.

Hmm, so it is kinda in the middle, so we're kinda both not wrong.

I'm not questioning its quality. I'm sure it will be a great game.

But 5 years between console entries is too long, and the fact that we've only gotten 13 seconds of footage in the last 14 months is just not enough. The game was supposed to be out by now and we don't even have a title, it's ridiculous.

I'm not questioning its quality. I'm sure it will be a great game.

But 5 years between console entries is too long, and the fact that we've only gotten 13 seconds of footage in the last 14 months is just not enough. The game was supposed to be out by now and we don't even have a title, it's ridiculous.

Though don't Zelda games take kind of long to make? I don't remember entirely, but isn't there quite a gap between main Zelda games..? Perhaps Aonuma is holding back more footage to only wait til it is near completion to excite us again on the title. I mean, that footage we got before was really great and got me hyped for their original release, so when they delayed it, it was a hard blow, at least for me. So yeah, it's probably about timing, at list it looks that way to me.

If it had launched in 2015 as initially promised, that would have been 4 years after Skyward Sword. That's reasonable, I can accept that.

5 is just too long in my opinion. Never before has a Nintendo console had to wait until it's on its deathbed to recieve it's first mainline Zelda entry. Link to the Past, Ocarina, Wind Waker, and Twilight Princess all arrived in the first 2 years of the SNES/N64/GCN/Wii. Wii U, on the other hand, will pushing or even passed it's 4th birthday if Zelda U comes out this holiday season.

And radio silence doesn't help; when one of your fanbase's most wanted games has been pushed back a year, giving them practically no new material to tide them over is just cruel.

Well, considering the quality and doing open world, I think it's understandable if they need more time. I'm not sure if Ninten themselves have tackled anything like that before since the 1st Zelda, and to do this well, it may be a lot of work for them to make it as good as possible. So at this point in time, I'm willing to wait one more year for them to finish up on it.

And also, they did show that short bit of it at the last direct, which I thought was pretty good.

Other devs have shown though that you can make a HD open world game in less than 5 years.

And that was 13 seconds of footage. 13 seconds in the last 14 months. That's simply not enough in my opinion.