What If… Breath of the Wild Had Released Exclusively on the Wii U, As Intended?

It’s funny to think about how perfectly certain things had to happen over the course of history to get us all to where we are today. Random occurrences, wild coincidences, and strange encounters; all these things make up the ingredients of life. Zooming in a bit more, it’s funny how a particular set of circumstances led to me a site about a video game franchise I loved, made me want to apply, and eventually start writing about the series I hold so dear, The Legend of Zelda.

Zelda is no different when thinking about the amount of chance, timing, and happenstance that sustained and shaped this franchise over the last 35 years, creating something bigger than anyone could have ever imagined all those years ago when Link first took his sword and set off in the land of Hyrule.

But what if things had been different?

It’s always been fascinating to me to think about how my favorite series would be different today – maybe even unrecognizable – if certain decisions had been made differently. Some of these “what if” scenarios paint a pretty ugly picture for the franchise had they have happened, but other scenarios make me wish that they had taken place.

This series of articles will focus on real world happenings, decisions that Nintendo made (or didn’t make) over the course of the last 3+ decades that shaped the series. Get ready to conduct a thought experiment, as every month, we’ll tackle the ultimate “What If” questions in the history of Zelda.

What If… Breath of the Wild Had Released Exclusively on the Wii U, As Intended?

 

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was the most important game Nintendo ever released. Think about it:

The Wii U was by far Nintendo’s worst selling mainline console ever, with consumers confused from day one as to what exactly a Wii U even was. The console had a handful of quality games, no doubt, but from an economics standpoint, it was a complete and utter failure.

The Wii U era never seemed darker for Nintendo than the day that Eiji Aonuma announced the delay of Zelda Wii U – the game that would go on to become Breath of the Wild – from 2015 to… well, who knew. Not only was the game delayed, but it was kept completely in the dark until E3 2016, a painstaking time period that really left the Wii U on life support. It became apparent that Zelda Wii U was going to be used to launch the new Nintendo console, codenamed the NX, effectively telling us that Nintendo were cutting their losses with the Wii U and pinning all of their hopes on Breath of the Wild being a success on their new hardware, the Nintendo Switch.

So yeah, there was a lot riding on Breath of the Wild being successful. But what if that delay had never happened?

Although Nintendo never went ahead and said it outright, it’s probably safe to deduce that part of the reason Zelda Wii U was delayed for as long as it was was so that Nintendo could port the game over to the Switch. But what if that decision hadn’t been made? What if Nintendo had stayed the course? I think Nintendo could be in a very different place today, and not necessarily a more favorable one.

I have no doubt that Breath of the Wild, had in came out as intended in 2015, would have been a success. I’m sure enough of the core game that we know and love was there to ensure that the game would have reviewed well, and I’m betting it would have sold relatively well too, maybe even becoming the Wii U’s highest selling game.

But… being the Wii U’s highest selling game is kind of like saying you had the nicest room in the Titanic: it sounds nice to say, but at the end of the day, you’re still on a sinking ship. And the Wii U really was a sinking ship. I don’t mean to beat up on the console, but I don’t think that Breath of the Wild would have saved it. I don’t think any game that Nintendo released could have saved it. If Nintendo had decided to double down and try and salvage the Wii U with a AAA+ game release like this revolutionary new Zelda game, it would have not only been sending Breath of the Wild out in a losing effort, but also sacrificing their long-term console-making future.

This may sound hyperbolic, but think about it. Nintendo had taken an absolute bath with the Wii U, tragically lost its president to illness, and was nearing the end of its life cycle for the 3DS. Nintendo in late-2016ish felt like a company in transition. The Switch felt like, to me at the time, their last ditch attempt to turn the ship around. If the Switch would have failed, we might be talking about Nintendo finally getting out of the console game and focusing on their IPs. In other words, we might have been playing Super Mario Bros. on the PlayStation or Metroid on the Xbox – something that seems ludicrous to consider now, but didn’t seem like it was that far off the mark in 2016 or 2015. The Switch absolutely had to succeed, and I’m not sure that without Breath of the Wild, it would have succeeded to the degree it did.

While I think that the Switch as a console and as a concept was strong enough to ward off that apocalyptic scenario I just laid out, I also think that having a game with the mystique and anticipation of Breath of the Wild, a game 3 years in the making as far as the public was concerned, as a launch title really helped it. Imagine if Breath if the Wild had launched on Wii U back in 2015… what would the Switch have launched with? Would it have been Mario Kart 8 Deluxe? Maybe, but would an enhanced port really have gotten people excited at the bat? Perhaps Super Mario Odyssey would have been moved up? I could see that, but would the game have been finished by then? Maybe Splatoon 2 could have been the launch game? A definite possibility, but Splatoon probably wasn’t a franchise that you could say was “big” enough at the time to launch a new Nintendo console. I really feel like Breath of the Wild was the only choice.

And yeah, Nintendo would have probably released a Switch port of Breath of the Wild if it had originally released on time, and it probably would have been successful, but it wouldn’t have been the same. The mystique would have been gone. That trailer may have never been created. It would have felt like yesterday’s news.

Nintendo made the tough call in basically sacrificing whatever was left of the Wii U’s life in order to set the Switch up for success, but I think it was the right call in the long run. Had they not, it’s safe to say that Breath of the Wild is not the highest selling Zelda game. It might even be fair to say the Nintendo Switch is not the success that it is.

The Switch had to succeed for Nintendo to keep making consoles. Breath of the Wild was a big reason the Switch got off to such a hot start. If Breath of the Wild releases on Wii U back in 2015… what does the state of the Switch, Nintendo, and the Zelda franchise look like today?

We’ll never know.

Andy Spiteri is the Editor-In-Chief of Zelda Dungeon. His fascination with hypotheticals that can never be truly answered knows no bounds. Follow his musings over on Twitter for other random thoughts.

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