Twilight Princess Delayed!

[Archaic]

http://cube.ign.com/articles/642/642238p1.html

Zelda Delayed to Next Year
Twilight Princess development team requests extra time to make it a better game.
by Matt Casamassina

August 16, 2005 - Nintendo announced this morning that its anticipated new adventure game, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, has been delayed. The title, formerly scheduled to debut this November around the world, has since been postponed to 2006 so that the developer can continue to make the game better.

"After much discussion, the Zelda development team has requested extra time to add new levels, more depth and even higher quality to Zelda: Twilight Princess," said Nintendo of America's vice president of corporate affairs, Perrin Kaplan. "Consequently, we're announcing a new global launch in 2006, after the conclusion of this fiscal year (March 31). We'll provide a specific date at a later point in time. While this may come as a disappointment to many eager fans, it will absolutely enrich the game and make it a multi-million seller."

Twilight Princess, developed by Nintendo and directed by Majora's Mask overseer Eiji Aonuma, was previously set to be the company's big holiday game. In fact, analysts expected the game to be Nintendo's single greatest deterrent to consumers potentially interested in Microsoft's next-generation console, Xbox 360, which is set for a November launch. The delay leaves Nintendo without a major holiday release on GameCube.

In the epic adventure, a 17-year-old Link travels across a gritty, realistic world and is able to move into an alternate dark land called the Twilight Realm, where he transforms into a wolf. Twilight Princess won a number of considerations by critics when it was presented in playable form at the Electronics Entertainment Expo. However, even then, members of the development team hinted in interviews that they would have to work overtime in order to meet a holiday release.

Nintendo has released seven new screenshots of the game in motion. Readers are directed to our images section for new shots of Link exploring a populated town and manipulating the snow as the wolf.

Stay tuned for much more on the game in the coming weeks and months.

 

[Doctor Oak]

That's easily the biggest mistake Nintendo have ever made.

1) The 360 now has NO competition AT ALL this Xmas.
2) Nintendo has only Pokemon for it's Xmas releases - and there's no chance XD will make it to number one.
3) Their promise of having the game out worldwide this year now means crap all.

If they arn't even announcing the date until next April, I fear for when the game will actually be launched.

It certainly kicks the idea of the Revolution ever being out before the end of next year right in the balls.

 

[Misty]

It certainly kicks the idea of the Revolution ever being out before the end of next year right in the balls.

Zelda doesn't really hurt the Revolution - quite the opposite, since the console is backwards compatible.

Anyway, I think I kind of foresaw this. Nintendo is infamous for their delays.

 

[Mario The World Champion]

Man, I saw some shots of the new Zelda game and coming from a main PS gamer, I'm looking forward to seeing this game in action. ^^

It's too bad that we'll have to wait a lot longer for it to be released.

 

[Trainer-c]

This is what I get for not checking the gaming sites for a few days...

This delay is bad news, but when you think about it the devolopment time
for the larger Zelda projects (Ocarina of Time, anyone?) has always been
two years at the very least.

 

[Doctor Oak]

It certainly kicks the idea of the Revolution ever being out before the end of next year right in the balls.

Zelda doesn't really hurt the Revolution - quite the opposite, since the console is backwards compatible.

Zelda is the last game Nintendo can count on to sell Gamecubes by the metric arseload. XD SHOULD do the same as Colosseum, and sell loads of bundle packs (which is no doubt what NOE is relying on this Xmas now) but Zelda will be a HUGE seller.

Being the most anticipated game pretty much ever, they KNOW it'll sell Cubes, mostly because of people selling their cubes only to have to buy them again when games like Zelda come out (idiots).

The logic of putting Zelda on the market and having the biggest Cube seller they'll have probably ever had up against the Revolution is a reeeeeeally bad one.

Gamecube sales have hit the floor recently, they're going to die out completely with the 360 out and PS3/Revolution on the way. If Nintendo wants to get rid of the many Cubes they have left in storage, they NEED Zelda.

There's no avoiding it, there must be at least a quarter between Zelda and the Revolution if not more.

Although the announcement of the PS3 possibly being delayed until 2006 may just have prompted this announcement too... having the Revolution out next Autumn/Xmas doesn't seem that bad to Ninty any more - so long as the PS3 isn't out before it.

 

[raekuul]

The only mistake here was allowing rumors to spread. I think that I may be able to spawn a new series. Then again, Nintendo hasn't been very receptive to games made by fans (mostly because they have basis on ROMs...), even though CoC is my own creation.

 

[Kem]

NO!!!! That game was the ONLY thing that made me feel less awful about Final Fantasy XII being pushed back!! I can't believe they're doing this! I was so excited about having it so soon! Great... next thing we know, I'll have to wait until next year for Kingdom Hearts 2, also. Stupid video game people.

 

[Locke Yggdrasill]

-_-;; that was a very big mistake, on nintendo's side. Now the 360 wont have any competition at christmas, as earlier stated by Doctor Oak.

 

[Selestius]

It really doesn't matter what Nintendo does. They always say Nintendo is bad, but with the new Downloading software for the Revolution, and using Wi-Fi Online Play, and compatibility with the DS (heard it somewhere at E3), it's getting better. I just hope what they're editing is probably the script. I doubt it, but I hope they do voiceovers.

I knew it would be delayed. I got the news at IGN as soon as I heard about it.

+Selestius - Dawn of the Moonlight+

 

[Locke Yggdrasill]

Yeah, voice overs would be nice. -_-;; I got kind of bored with Paper Marion, the thousand year door, where all that was stated was: Oh yeah. mmhmmm. awawawawawawa, and such.

 

[Doctor Oak]

I doubt it, but I hope they do voiceovers.

The mouthing animation does look stupid with no words actually coming out... It wouldn't totally surprise me if the extra time is for voiceovers (and various translated languages... hmmm, German Zelda???)...

I think it's a 50/50 chance between voiceovers and no voiceovers though. Definitely nothing to put your money on - and even at that, the odds are stacked further in favour of no voices.

One good thing coming out of this is the lack of the likelyhood of Dungeons being cut, as Windwaker suffered (visibly) from. A better TTP can only be a fantastic thing, the bad part simply arises from the fact that it leaves Nintendo as a financial company with a weak Xmas line-up compared to what once was.

They were going to dominate this Xmas hands down... now they'll be lucky to get the end of school rush.

 

[Selestius]

They say Shigeru Miyamoto is a kid at heart, but doesn't think the graphics for Wind Waker are cartoony. "There is life and reality", he says. "You see Link atttack with swords in real-time. His eyes move in motion to what you are doing. Whatever instincts in life you have, he'll have. It's not a kiddy game - it's something for all people to enjoy, even if they are in their late fifty's, and clueless about things, grab a Zelda game with cel-shaded graphics and you'll notice it is much like life. That's how things are - "cartoony graphics" or realistic at all."

+Selestius - Dawn of the Moonlight+

 

[Misty]

If Zelda has full voice acting, or even more than a tiny bit of spoken dialog(i.e., voiceovers for important scenes a la Tales of Symphonia), I will absolutely die. Miyamoto, and perhaps Nintendo as a whole, are pretty much anti-voice acting, with rare exceptions. This is, of course, Nintendo's obsession with traditionalism in play - characters didn't talk during the NES days, so they don't want them talking even when the tech supports it.

 

[Locke Yggdrasill]

Precisely the game I was thinking of, MistyIRC, ToS had Voice-acting in a few of the more important parts, which I will be fine with in Zelda, althoughI could use the whole game in Voice-act-ness.