Yesterday, Nintendo made a host of major announcements, but did so as quietly as they could manage. A handful of tweets, a note to their investors, and a public statement or two. Not exactly the fanfare you’d expect for the first news about the NX and The Legend of Zelda in ages.
This is because it’s not very good news.
According to Nintendo’s financial earnings report, their next console, the NX, will be released in March 2017, outside the traditional holiday window. The Legend of Zelda on Wii U has been delayed out of 2016 to 2017 (after being delayed out of 2015 to 2016) and is no longer just a Wii U title. As many suspected, it will indeed go cross-platform, and be released for the NX as well, more or less as a launch title, if these dates hold.
The NX news isn’t technically a delay because there was never an announced date for the release of the console. A few outlandish reports said Nintendo was actually going to be ready to release the console in the summer of this year, but all conventional wisdom and inside sources seemed to indicate it would be a holiday 2016 release.
Now, allegedly arriving in March, that puts the NX in a very strange place. I cannot think of a single western console release that has taken place outside the August-November window, ever. The last time this happened at all was the Japanese release of the PlayStation 2 in the spring, and it expanded outward in the fall after that, but it’s an incredibly rare occurrence.
I have seen some try to spin this, saying that having a “launch window” all to themselves is a net positive, but if that was true, would we really have seen almost every major console release throughout history set up to facilitate holiday sales? I doubt it. And this coming fall, when Sony may be launching its PS4.5, Nintendo will miss a chance to show up with the NX and say “forget half-consoles, we have a fully-fledged new system.” Debuting a powerful NX unit with Zelda as a launch title during the holiday very well may have put Sony and Microsoft on their back foot, at least temporarily. I’m not sure a spring release accomplishes that in the same way.
Then there’s the question of the Wii U, which is already badly struggling compared to the ultra-successful PS4 and the normal-amounts-of-successful Xbox One. Talk of the NX began so early to ensure fans (and investors) that something better was coming, but now, instead of a new console being a few months away, it’s now ten months, at the very least. And what exactly is the Wii U going to do during this void of time going forward? With Zelda out of the picture, Star Fox Zero could end up being Nintendo’s biggest release of the year (and it’s been far from a typically well-received first party hit). The only other console title that could maybe be considered a draw is Paper Mario, which will supposedly be released in the holiday window. But this would be a games drought the likes of which the console has never seen, and considering its already sparse release schedule the past few years, that’s saying something.
Furthermore, I’m not convinced the NX will actually end up hitting this spring target after all. As I said before, this March date is not a delay. Rather, it’s the first time Nintendo has announced a release date at all. And what does Nintendo do after they announce release dates? They delay them. I would not be surprised if the NX ended up released in the summer or even all the way to the fall, pushing it into a more traditional release window, only a year after everyone expected.
This theory is amplified by perhaps what I view as the strangest part of this entire announcement. Despite having an announced March release date, Nintendo has said outright that the NX is not going to be featured at E3. At all.
Now, some may say that this is just Nintendo being Nintendo and E3 is irrelevant and what not, but I don’t buy it. Yes, it’s true that Sony and Microsoft announced their consoles at their own private events, but they did that before E3, and then in turn got to dive deeper into the PS4 and Xbox One at the show itself.
If Nintendo is not showing anything at all about the NX at E3, that assumes that they will have some Directs discussing the console after that. But...that’s it. If they’re really shooting for a March release, there will not be an E3 in which they’re showing off any of the games/features at all, not in 2016, and only maybe in 2017 once the console is actually out. It’s downright bizarre to me that Nintendo is planning to release a new console nine months after E3, yet will show nothing from it at the biggest games show in the world. Even if you think E3’s influence is waning, there’s no way this doesn’t come across as strange, and it implies to me that development is not yet where it needs to be. Because if it was, why would Nintendo not want to show off a bunch of awesome NX games at E3, stealing the year’s buzz and getting fans excited for the new console? So no, I’m not sold that even after this unexpectedly late release date, we will end up seeing the NX in March either.
The Zelda angle of all this is more along the lines of what people expected, but it’s sad all the same. Nintendo has pretty much said their E3 show will focus on Zelda and Zelda alone, but not the NX version of Zelda, which is weird, considering that it will almost certainly be the “definitive” version of the game with the (hopefully) increased capabilities of the NX (I've reached out to Nintendo to confirm these E3 plans).
The general sentiment I’ve seen among Nintendo fans is that they’re massively disappointed with the Wii U never getting a Zelda game to itself. The console already has never had a true Mario sequel (New Super Mario Bros. and Mario Maker don’t count), and now, what once was supposed to be “Zelda for Wii U” is going to have to play second fiddle to the NX’s cross-platform version.
No, I don’t think it was wise for anyone to have bought a Wii U for the sole reason that they assumed it would get its own Zelda, which is what some upset fans are claiming motivated their purchase, and yet I understand the anger all the same. An entire console generation passing by without an exclusive full Mario or Zelda sequel is pretty absurd, considering how heavily Nintendo relies on its first person properties. There certainly have been some great games on the Wii U, but I know many fans who feel like they bought a $300 console to play maybe 4-5 games total over the course of a 4+ year lifespan. And as such, they’re not exactly leaping at the opportunity to potentially do it all over again with the NX.
Nintendo has lost something invaluable these past few years, trust. Fans cannot trust their release dates to be accurate even within years at this point. They cannot trust that Nintendo’s new systems can perform at the level of their competitors. They cannot trust that certain staples of Nintendo’s catalogue will make their way to the system if they have enough patience. They cannot trust the idea that an “innovative” new Nintendo console is a sound investment when it used to be a sure thing.
I don’t think there’s any way to dress this up. If the best way you can spin this is “delaying stuff is good because it will probably be less bad,” that’s not terribly compelling, given the larger context of the situation. This late NX premiere is going to make the Wii U wither and die to a degree we haven’t seen yet. A complete and utter lack of information at E3 projects either a lack of confidence on Nintendo’s part, hints at rocky development timeline, or both. Zelda being delayed out of another year and going cross platform is nothing short of a disappointment for most Wii U owners.
Perhaps at the end of all this, Nintendo debuts a blockbuster new system that defies all expectations and launches with the greatest Zelda game of all time. But at this point, given what’s been happening with Nintendo for nearly a decade now, it’s getting harder and harder to truly believe that.
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