The Legend of Zelda Wii U to miss 2015

UPDATE: The Legend of Zelda for Wii U will not arrive this year as planned, Nintendo has said, and it won’t be shown at E3 either.

Zelda franchise boss Eiji Aonuma said in a video today that the development team has come across ‘new possibilities’ in its bid to create a truly open world Zelda series, and that its main aim is to create ‘the ultimate and most complete Zelda game’. Therefore, Aonuma said, hitting that 2015 release window is no-longer his ‘number one priority’ and apologised to fans.

Nintendo has since announced that the game will not be playable or shown at E3 2015, either.

It will come as a disappointment to Nintendo supporters, although they’ve grown accustomed to delays to Zelda games – particularly for home consoles. The last two home console Zelda games – Skyward Sword and Twilight Princess – were both delayed by over a year. Wind Waker famously had two dungeons removed from the game so that it hit its 2003 release date.

It will be a big miss from Nintendo’s release schedule for the year, although Nintendo did announce last year that it expects to ship a Star Fox game before Christmas.

It’s the latest big-name console exclusive to be delayed from 2015. Sony announced that Uncharted 4 would also not be making its pre-Christmas release window.