Skyward Sword is Over Half Complete

[Aero_Dynamic]

I've read a recent interview on Pocket-Lint of Shigeru Miyamoto telling why Nintendo is still the dominant head over motion controls and 2 small parts caught my eye, one of them says that by the time when they were interviewing Mr. Miyamoto, the Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword is over half complete. Seeing this, we can assume very greatly that Skyward Sword is on it's way to hit the shelves VERY soon. Progress is looking up for the game, looking at a month or two (maybe more) they said Skyward Sword's development is going along very quickly with no problems. Now, with it "over half complete" it's safe to assume that it's almost done obviously.
Although saying that it's "over half complete" is exaggerating a little on the note that it's a little half-way done. It's probably done, just that they are tweaking it a little. Probably it meant that when they said it's over half complete, it would be like... like saying it in fractions I suppose, like suppose the game was in 6 sections, it would be saying that there's 5/6 parts/five out of six parts it's done basically. Just a little is left, then testing and some polishing and it's done!

Now the second thing that I thought was interesting was this:

The latest Zelda title will be a Nintendo exclusive, a game that exerts a commercial pull so powerful that people will buy consoles especially to play it.

With this said, it looks like Skyward Sword could have a very strong impact that people will buy Wiis just to play the game. Even if this isn't said, it still looks a very promising game. This looks like a must-have game for the Wii.

So what do you think? Do you agree that Skyward Sword is even more than half complete? Excited? And do you think Skyward Sword will be so good people will buy Wiis just for it?

Tell me what you think.

 

[nicktheslayer]

Its the reason i bought my wii!

Even though ive had my wii lot longer than i knew about this. I did it way ahead of time. For this reason mostly.

 

[Link-182]

Yeah, I agree, I buy the next Nintendo console just for the next Zelda.
I wouldn't have even bought my Wii if Twilight Princess didn't come out three weeks earlier than the Gamecube version.(I was dying to have it in my hands asap)
I think this will indeed increase Wii sales, especially if SS gets great reviews.

Now, about the "half complete" comment... doesn't that make it sound not that close to being done...
4-5 year development time... over half done sounds like 60% done. So it SOUNDS like another 2 years in the studio, obviously that's not correct. So am I misinterpreting something?

 

[DuckNoises]

Skyward Sword is more than half-complete; it's been finished for a long, long time now. Historically, Nintendo has finished their games far ahead of schedule, particularly their main developer, Nintendo of Tokyo EAD. With Aonuma, Miyamoto, and Iwata all being major producers of the game, it's going to get done very quickly. Aonuma has already mentioned that Skyward Sword was more or less complete in E3 interviews, and I'm pretty sure he mentioned it was near complete almost a year ago. The only times major Nintendo releases have been close to late were instances where they were having to deal with new hardware, and the Wii is certainly not one of those cases. Skyward Sword has been in development almost as long as Ocarina of Time, and that game had a lot more new and innovative content than what we're going to see in Skyward Sword; not that I'm bashing SS, but OoT was the first Zelda title to incorporate a whole extra dimension and handle all of the many, many problems that had to be fixed from dealing with drastically different game content, and Ocarina of Time got finished on schedule (if not a little ahead of schedule). Skyward Sword isn't being delayed because it's not finished, it's being delayed for market ploys.

That's why they were initially pushing for a late 2010 release, which was fairly firm up until E3 2010. At E3, Nintendo announced a large number of games for Wii coming out in the final quarter, and Nintendo pushed the date to April 2010 to secure market dominance in that month. Nintendo already had a fairly secure roster of games for late 2010, and it would be overkill to release one of its biggest game franchises where its popularity wasn't needed.

I'm assuming that Nintendo is pushing for a record-breaking fiscal year in 2011 to beat out Microsoft and Sony; since Sony and Microsoft have very slim releases in late spring, Nintendo is pulling out its bigger guns to steal the spotlight off of Microsoft and Sony and hopefully overshadow them for the rest of the year. Not only is Skyward Sword coming out in April, but what's more important is the 3DS; as hardware, it is likely to continue selling year-round, and if I'm any good at identifying trends, I think the 3DS is going to be the new PS2. They are going to release a lot of first and third party content that year, and it's probably going to dominate the market. The 3DS is probably going to be the next big thing. But the consoles are barren for most of the spring; that brings me to my next point.

In a way, Skyward Sword is the Wii's last hurrah; it's unfortunate to think of it that way, but it's probably one of the last major first party titles for the system. They've been prolonging Skyward Sword to stretch out the system's life, to try and continue it before the system fades away. They can't prolong it much longer, because it's become pretty evident that they've been done the game for a while. The game is probably undergoing very minor tweaks, and possibly localization. It would be shocking to find out the game isn't ready by now.

 

[Twili]

It doesn't metter to me how much I have to wait. All that matters to me is that the game comes out A Ok

 

[ZeldafreakCJM]

Since when does "over half way complete" equal a delay. Assuming half way means 50%, then Skyward Sword could be anywhere from 51% done too "shipping out tomorrow". Does this even count as a delay? Oh and correct me if I wrong but isn't the whole "SS will release in April" thing just a rumor, started by an tenative date given by GameStop, a already incredibly unreliable source, for example back in march when I preorder SMG2 the manager of GameStop gave a list of all the upcoming Wii games (this was before E3 2010) that said "The Legend Of Zelda Wii" was releasing on November 11 2010 a tenative release date. sorry if that sounded angry I'm just a angry today.

 

[Link-182]

Actually if you read the interview carefully, Shiggy says Mario Kart 3DS hasn't been announced yet, but Skyward Sword has, it also says "at the time of the interview", its over half complete.
This most likely means the interview was done during E3 but they didn't post it until now.
Also, why would Shiggy be out doing a random interview in December? Especially with Pocket Lint, they aren't anything special.

 

[Agahnim]

Yeah, this sentence sure got me startled, too. I really hope Miyamoto-san didn't mean it literally like 51-74 percent, then again anything above 70 percent would still be all right, i guess. After all, we still have three, four months to go. Anyway, i'll stick with DuckNoises and trust in Nintendo having nearly finished the game and just waiting for a more lucrative time to launch SS.

 

[gogo]

"over half-way complete" sounds like 51 % to me.

OMG! NOT TWILIGHT PRINCESS ALL OVER AGAIN!!

 

[RoBirk29384]

I think the interview is misleading. Looking at the years spent creating Skyward Sword, if the game is just over half complete, you wouldn't be playing it until 2012. Either the interview is old, or there is a misconception. "Over half" could mean 51% or 80%. We don't know, and we won't know until they give us a solid release date, hopefully soon. I'm expecting a release to begin Nintendo's fiscal year sales, in hopes that it may sell Wii consols. This would entail a late-March into April release schedule. This is all just speculation of course, based on information they've outted about Skyward Sword.

 

[Yonatesf]

I agree with Link-182, it's an old interview. If you read the interview, you'll see that Miyamoto never calles the game by it's name, he just says 'the new Zelda game'. Also, the Mario Kart thing is weird. It says Mario Kart for 3DS hadn't been announced at the time. Mario Kart 3DS was announced at E3, which means the interview is pre-E3. That makes it over 5 months old. Which also makes sense, because Miyamoto wasn't allowed to reveal the subtitle of the game. Everything works out.
Damn you Pocket-Lint, for deceiving us.

 

[merricontrari]

The game itself has probably been mostly complete for ages now. There is a lot of testing and such like that to do between completion and release. For that matter, it could be completely done and they are just waiting for a good release date.

 

[Ghosi]

I do hope that it is close to being done and way over halfway done. Maybe we might be seeing it in Febuary or May, neither is certain. I just hope it will come out before the schoolyear ends( June 2nd ) because I would be leaving for Hungary after that.

 

[ZeldaMaster]

Didn't it get delayed? Thats what I've heard

 

[TFWTH]

I think it'll get released within Spring at least. It depends whether the "Over Half Complete" is talking about gameplay, story, or what. If it's Story I can see it being very close to completion, after all, that's just sorting out cutscenes, character models, and dialogue (which is presumably text). If it's Gameplay, chances are they need to make dungeons, items...

It's really quite confusing.

Besides, didn't Miyamoto say the game was practically finished at E3 but he wanted to tweak some things in terms of both gameplay and graphics?