Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild looks set to become the game that puts Nintendo at the center of the gaming world.
Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is expected to launch in 2017 for both Wii U and the yet unreleased Nintendo NX.
Nintendo posted some gameplay videos of Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild a couple of days ago on its official Facebook page.
The video took viewers on a tour of Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s Temple of Time. You can check out that video here.
As you can probably see, assuming you actually watched the video, that Nintendo’s new upcoming role-playing video game, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, looks stunningly beautiful and has varied environments.
Nintendo cleverly captioned the above video: “Does this seem familiar?” in order to test the series’ faithful followers.
Initially, Nintendo had scheduled to release The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sometime in 2016, but now that launch date has been pushed back into 2017.
Industry insiders believe that Nintendo delayed The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s release date because the company wanted to have a solid release day title line-up for its Nintendo NX video game console.
As a result, it is still unclear exactly when The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild will be released for Wii or Nintendo NX.
Nintendo recently confirmed NX release date, through an official statement, to be in March 2017.
The company stated that the new Nintendo NX would launch with brand new concepts. Nintendo also verified that the company’s upcoming video game console, labeled NX, will be launched globally when Nintendo finally releases it in March 2017.
And it is precisely because Nintendo is betting so much on its Nintendo NX video game console that the company has continued to delay The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild from its original 2015 release day to sometime in 2017.
Followers of the long-running Zelda series might also be interested to know that initially The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was slated to be a Wii title instead of a Nintendo NX and WiiU title.
It was only a month ago that Nintendo confirmed to reporters that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild will indeed be a dual console release. As a result, its release date was further pushed back from 2016 to 2017.
Nintendo, however, said that it delayed The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s launch date because the company wanted to five Zelda’s development team sufficient time to develop new possibilities for its upcoming game.
Nintendo had initially listed The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s status as TBD (to be announced) for a long time and it was only in November of 2015 that the company decided to delay the launch date officially from November 2015 to sometime in 2016.
Few knew that Nintendo would further postpone that release date into 2017. Nintendo seems to have learned some valuable lessons from recently revealed No Man’s Sky and the first of those valuable lessons appears to be: “Always keep a mystery factor.”
Nintendo had shown very little of actual gameplay footage of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild until June of 2016 when the company finally relented and released a length video of gameplay footage from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
The demo was released at E3, and you can check out the video here in order to experience the expansiveness of its game world.
As of now, it is still not confirmed if The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild will be a launch title for Nintendo NX when the console finally launches some time in March 2017.
A report that was released recently alleged that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild along with other blockbusters Nintendo titles such as the new Mario and Pokemon games (Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon which will both be role playing video games) will be made available to the public within six months of NX’s release date.
The report also stated that the primary reason why Nintendo wanted to delay its big titles to coincide more or less with the launch date of Nintendo NX was that Nintendo didn’t want NX to have a slow start.
In order to build the momentum from the outset, Nintendo intends to bring out all its major titles for Nintendo NX as soon as the new video game console is launched.
Nintendo NX is also rumored to be a portable console that will have detachable controllers. Various media outlets have corroborated this story, but it has not been officially confirmed by Nintendo.
If the rumor does turn out to be true, then it raises a serious question mark whether The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild will have enough processing power at its disposal to support modern graphics and high frame rates.
Nintendo has said that the company intends to bring in new gamers to its NX console and for that, it has introduced brand new concepts, which the company hasn’t revealed yet, which will add unique elements to Nintendo NX when it finally gets a launch in March 2017.
Shigeru Miyamoto of Nintendo recently told reporters that, “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild” and continued, “That’s why we can’t share anything at this point, and I don’t want to comment on the other companies. If it was just a matter of following advancements in technology, things would be coming out a lot quicker.”
Even with the hype of a new console along with the other main titles that are slated to launch within six months of each other, Nintendo has recently stated that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild will need to sell around 2 million copies in order to become profitable for the company.
The two million figure was revealed at a shareholder meeting that took place in Japan. The meeting was live blogged by a Twitter user who goes by the name of NStyle.
The tweets were translated by Cheesemeister, and they revealed that Nintendo’s Miyamoto, who created Mario earlier in his career as a video game designer, discussed at length about the number of sales it will take for all Nintendo major titles to recover development costs.
As mentioned before, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is all but set to launch in 2017 close to the launch dates of Wii U and Nintendo NX.
Nintendo, so far, has shown very little of its new console Nintendo NX and has not discussed the console’s “brand-new concepts” with any media outlet.
Therefore, it is uncertain whether the 2 million sales number is representative of combined sales for Nintendo Wii U and Nintendo NX or just individually. It is also unclear if digital sales have been factored in the two million sales figure.
Perhaps it should be mentioned that the last game in the Legend of Zelda series, Skyward Sword which launched for Wii in 2012, was able to surpass 3.4 million units in sales within two months of its launch date.
While addressing the meeting, Miyamoto also said that the development cycle for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was about five years and during that period over 300 people worked on the new Zelda game in order to push the game to its final stages of completion.
He also said that at the moment, the game has about 100 staff members working on it. Miyamoto also explained that the only reason why Nintendo didn’t show off Nintendo NX at E3 was that the company was worried about imitators.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is expected to be available as a launch title for both Nintendo NX and Wii U.
Nintendo hasn’t had its greatest financial year in terms of revenue and profit in 2016, and the company is expecting a big return from its big titles such as Mario, Pokemon games and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
In about seven months time, we’ll all know for certain if Nintendo’s gambit of launching all of its major titles along with its new console within a short duration of six months paid off or not.
But outsiders who have seen gameplay footage of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild have remarked that even with the fact that Nintendo doesn’t target high-end graphics for its exclusive titles; the company still needs to power up Nintendo NX enough to keep it relevant in an era of video game console systems that is dominated by the likes of Xbox One S and Playstation Neo.
We’ll keep you updated on the latest news regarding Nintendo NX and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, so stay tuned.
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