Reggie Discusses Why Zelda Wii U Is Absent From E3

Although we all remember that fateful day Miyamoto told us we would not be seeing Zelda Wii U at E3, I think most of us had our fingers crossed that it was just another clever little trick and Nintendo was toying with our emotions (sigh). But now that E3 has almost come to an end, I think the sad truth is finally sinking in. There will be no Zelda Wii U for us! In an interview with IGN, Reggie Fils-Aime discusses the decision to exclude the title from this years E3 and to help clarify some of the rumblings happening in the Zelda community about whether we will even see the title in 2016. Follow on past the break to see what he said.

Reggie discusses a few things about Zelda Wii U with IGN:

We spoke to Miyamoto and he told us, Nintendo has some really great Zelda footage and chose not to show it at E3. Can you talk about the thinking behind that decision?

“It goes back to the statement I made earlier about how we view E3. We just fundamentally don’t believe in showing content at E3 that is going to be a long term proposition. We like to show content that typically will launch in the upcoming Holiday and maybe extending into the first half of the following year. And at this point, the new Zelda for Wii U is not a 2015 project.”

I understand that guideline and why you choose to observe that, but that must be taken on a case-by-case basis. When you guys showed Zelda last year, I would’t have believed that game was supposed to come out in Q1 or Q2. I would have thought that was a Q3 game.

“No, but when we showed it last year, we believed it was a 2015 game.”

Do you worry at all that not showing it this year sends the message to Wii U owner and the potential Wii U buyer that Zelda is not a 2016 game?

“No. I don’t believe that it sends that messages. In fact, in separate interviews [Shigeru] Miyamoto has reinforced that it’s a 2016 game, and I also believe he’s reinforced that it’s a Wii U game because I know that there is that thinking floating around.”

Yes, that was the reason we asked about that.

“Our mentality is more near-term when we think about E3. And, yes, we take it on a case-by-case basis. There’s also a recognition that we didn’t want to frustrate the consumer. We could have scored a lot of points and showed some little tidbit of Zelda Wii U, but in our collective opinion the belief was, in the end, that would cause more frustration than benefit.”

 Is that based on knowledge gained from years of having to delay Zelda?

“It’s based on a collective belief — and when I talk collective, I’m talking about [Satoru] Iwata, Mr. Miyamoto, myself, Tatsuya Eguchi, [Shinya] Takahashi. The collective braintrust within Nintendo. It was our collective belief that it would have a negative effect of showing a game that we knew wasn’t going to be a next-six-to-eight-month-type of game.”

If the decision to delay the title was made to ensure that they release a quality game, then I can accept that. I just wish that it hadn’t been shown at E3 last year at all then. It seems their mentality now might be based on the learnings they had from last year about showing a game that was too early on in its development (this is me being optimistic).

What are your thoughts on IGN’s interview with Reggie? Do you believe that the title is still coming to the Wii U? Do you think that not featuring it at E3 will hurt Nintendo? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.

Source: IGN