The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was announced in 2013, but was later delayed to 2015 before being pushed to 2017. Nintendo offered an explanation as to why there was such a huge delay, but it has been noticed that in the past, almost every Zelda game Nintendo planned was eventually delayed.So what gives? In an interview with Kotaku, Zelda’s series producer Eiji Aonuma said, “When we think about the release period for any Zelda game, we really want to get it out as soon as possible so that everybody can play and experience it. But every time we make a Zelda, we want to make something new. It’s hard to gauge how long that’s going to take. And it’s also hard to gauge at what point whatever we consider to be new is done.”
Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto adds that sometimes it’s because the direction of the game has yet to be determined, and when it has, implementing that direction has its own set of challenges. “One could be that the direction just hasn’t been decided, which is probably the worst kind of delay. And the other is that the direction has been decided but putting that into reality—implementing that—is taking time. So it might have taken us six months to do this much. It’ll take us a year to do that much.”
In any case we suppose from a gamer’s standpoint, this is both good and bad. Delaying the game to get it right is obviously welcome, but since it would result in only playing it much later isn’t that great either, but better late than never, right?