Miyamoto, Aonuma on why Zelda games tend to see delays
Zelda games – the mainline console ones in particular – have a propensity to be delayed. When asked why this tends to happen, Shigeru Miyamoto told Kotaku:
“First of all, it would be great if I didn’t have to put a release date out at all. But I have to.”
“I think there’s different reasons for delays. One could be that the direction just hasn’t been decided, which is probably the worst kind of delay. And the other is that the direction has been decided but putting that into reality—implementing that—is taking time. So it might have taken us six months to do this much. It’ll take us a year to do that much.”
Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma also weighed in, sharing the following:
“When we think about the release period for any Zelda game, we really want to get it out as soon as possible so that everybody can play and experience it. But every time we make a Zelda, we want to make something new. It’s hard to gauge how long that’s going to take. And it’s also hard to gauge at what point whatever we consider to be new is done.
“A lot of times what we try to tackle takes a lot longer than anticipated. So that’s why many times the development struggle there is a delay. The people around us keep telling us: ‘This is the last one. You really need to shape up.’”
There was also some talk specifically about Breath of the Wild:
“In terms of Breath of the Wild, we implemented many things like the physics engine and the AI and the type of graphics that we use. We had to make sure that design has enough time to create that. It just dawned on us that we’re not able to do that in this schedule. That’s what we realized about two years ago. In this instance, we never really experienced this, so that’s why we had to delay it.”
“Mr. Aonuma and I had this understanding that this game should be done in this timeframe. And he’s in a tough position. He can’t say that we can’t do it. So I had someone else look into it and they had to convince Mr. Aonuma, and then they had to convince me.” – Miyamoto
