Reggie on why Zelda Wii U missed E3, still on that console and in 2016
This information comes from Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime…
On the decision not to show Zelda Wii U at E3…
Reggie Fils-Aime: “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.”
On how Nintendo showed Zelda Wii U last year even though it seemed like a Q3 game…
Fils-Aime: “No, but when we showed it last year, we believed it was a 2015 game.”
On whether he worries that not showing it sends the message to current/potential Wii U owners that it’s not a 2016 game…
Fils-Aime: “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.”
Fils-Aime: “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.”
On whether that’s based on knowledge gained from years of having to delay Zelda…
Fils-Aime: “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.”
