Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime has once again touched on why they decided not to share any news about The Legend of Zelda Wii U at E3 2015.
He shared that the “collective braintrust within Nintendo,” comprised of Satoru Iwata, Shigeru Miyamoto, Tatsuya Eguchi, Shinya Takahashi and himself, had believed that it would have had “a negative effect” considering it’s still so far from release.
Their strategy was to focus on games releasing within the next eight months, rather than to score points by announcing projects that were years away from completion.
“It goes back to the statement I made earlier about how we view E3,” Fils-Aime began in his explanation to IGN. “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.”
Asked as to whether such a decision would suggest to current, and potential, Wii U owners that it may not even see release in 2016, Fils-Aime moved to dismiss such a claim.
“No. I don’t believe that it sends that message,” he responded. “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.
“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.”
