The ‘Legend Of Zelda’ Wii U Delayed, Will Not Be Shown At E3 2015

Nintendo Signage — Nintendo signage is displayed at the company's booth at the 2014 Electronic Entertainment Expo, known as E3, in Los Angeles, California June 11, 2014. Reuters/Kevork Djansezian

Long-time “Legend of Zelda” fans might have seen this coming, but it doesn’t make it any easier to stomach. Nintendo has officially announced that “The Legend of Zelda” Wii U has been delayed and will no longer make its planned 2015 release date. Worse still, the game will not be shown at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in June this year.

The news was announced by series producer Eiji Aonuma, in a video on the official Nintendo of Europe YouTube channel. Aonuma states that as work has progressed on “The Legend of Zelda” Wii U, the team began to realise the enormous possibilities an open-world “Zelda” game presents. He says that as this became clearer, he felt it was important that the team was not limited by a schedule, but rather the scope of its imagination.

“As we have worked to turn these possibilities into reality, new ideas have continued to spring forth, and it now feels like we have the potential to create something that exceeds my own expectations. As I have watched our development progress, I have come to think that rather than work with meeting a specific schedule as our main objective and releasing a game that reflects only what we can create within that scheduled time, I feel strongly that our focus should be to bring all these ideas to life in a way that will make ‘Zelda’ on Wii U the best game it can possibly be,” he explains.

Aonuma concluded the update by apologising to fans for the delay and promising that the team’s priority was to make the most complete “Zelda” game possible. Though Aonuma’s reasons are hard to fault, fans will no doubt be even more disappointed to hear that the game will not be shown off at E3 this year. The news comes via a tweet from the Nintendo of America official Twitter account and confirms Aonuma’s promise that the dev team are still working hard on exploring all the gameplay possibilities on offer.

As noted by Gamespot, despite the delay, Nintendo has a healthy lineup of major titles slated for release through 2015, including “Splatoon,” “Mario Maker,” “Star Fox” and “Xenoblade Chronicles X.” The situation recalls a famous quote from “The Legend of Zelda” creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, which in which he states that while a delayed game can eventually be a good game, a rushed game is forever bad. Fans will be hoping they’re able to get their hands on “The Legend of Zelda” Wii U sooner rather than later.