Zelda: Breath of the Wild delays finally explained

In January 2013, Nintendo announced that a new Zelda game was in the works for the Wii U and it would be released in 2015. Two months later, Nintendo announced that the game has been delayed and was planned on releasing in 2016.

This past April, Nintendo announced that the new Zelda game had been pushed back until 2017 and would be releasing on the Wii U and the Nintendo NX. At the Nintendo Treehouse E3 event, a year after the new Zelda game was supposed to be released, we finally got our first look at Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

We were never given much information as to why this new entry in the Zelda franchise was delayed so many times, until now. Zelda’s series producer Eiji Aonuma, when asked about the delays, said this:

“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 Aonuma followed this up by saying:

“A lot of times what we try to tackle takes a lot longer than anticipated. So that’s why many times the development struggle there is a delay. The people around us keep telling us: ‘This is the last one. You really need to shape up.’”

Nintendo chief game designer Shigeru Miyamoto elaborated on Aonuma’s words, saying that there are different types of delays.

“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.”

Nintendo has yet to announce the day that Zelda: Breath of the Wild will be released. We do know that it will be available in 2017 for the Wii U and the upcoming Nintendo NX.