Here's a fun PR trick for anyone out there with some bad news to drop on the unsuspecting public: wait until the end of the day on a Friday to let it out. You're way less likely to get follow-up emails from pesky journalists, and you can always say "Sorry! I'd already gone home for the day!" if any writers who did send inquiries complain about not getting a response.

Nintendo just employed this super fun method in announcing (via Facebook, of all places) that The Legend of Zelda for Wii U, arguably the biggest game currently slated for release on the platform, will likely not arrive this year as originally promised.

Series producer Eiji Aonuma delivers the bad news in a short video, explaining that in the last few months, the team has "experienced firsthand the freedom of exploration that hasn't existed in any Zelda game to date," and that they have discovered "several new possibilities" for the game. In an effort to fully realize these ideas, the team has decided that they are "no longer making a 2015 release our number one priority."

You could read into this and conceive that there's a chance that Zelda still might hit this year, but it's also wholly unlikely that Nintendo would even bother to drop a video message like this if they believed there was still a solid shot of that happening. Why rile up the fanbase unnecessarily, you know?

Delays are delays and a game with more work put into it almost always trumps a game shoved out to meet a specific release window. Still, that's likely cold comfort to anyone who was hoping to play the game this year, especially given the paucity of Nintendo's remaining Wii U lineup for 2015.

surprising absolutely nobody

Nintendo NX Launch Game? (If it's a living room console thing... (actually that doesn't make any sense cos' that's when it'd be announced unless something crazy happens. (Don't worry about it. (Also I thought that was 2016 anyway.))))

2015 is looking more and more barren. Where did all the video games go?

I forgot that it was supposed to come out this year. Not surprised though, we basically got no information about it after E3 ended.

Not surprised or disappointed.

Ah well, I'm glad I won't have to juggle Zelda with all the other 2015 business going on. Seems this one will take some focus.

Disappointing but not at all surprising.

I am shocked, SHOCKED I tell you!

Had no idea this thing was even being targeted for 2015, my guess was November 2016.

Don't know if I'm enjoying this neverending loop of whining in comments (not necessarily here) about games being delayed and games being released too early and being shallow or broken. People should be happy the former happens in order to prevent the latter.

@pirata: there's plenty of huge games coming out this year compared to last year

I can wait, just don't delay X as well.

Looks like I'll be waiting another year to buy a WiiU

2015 is the 2014 of 2015.

Well, I'd rather wait and have an awesome experience and a FINISHED game.

D:

Time to sell my Wii U? Time to sell my Wii U.

So it'll probably be like Twilight Princess and release on two consoles, the Wii U and NX.

I never believed this was coming out this year, called it as such a month or so back. They way they should it off a few months back, it seemed SUPER unlikely to come out this year - it doesn't even have a proper name yet.

I was basically waiting to hear this news. Was going to happen sooner or later.

Y'all are super crazy. This Zelda game will probably ship in 2016.

The NX will almost certainly not come out in 2016, because I don't think the NX is even ready to be announced at E3 if they're barely acknowledging right now that they're doing R&D on it. The Wii U was announced and shown in a prototype version at E3 2011, wasn't released until Fall 2012. The Wii announcement and release schedule was similarly protracted. It really sounds like Nintendo has nothing NX-related to show this E3, so assuming it gets shown in a super rough-ass form at E3 2016, I see it coming out in 2017.

Plus, considering the Wii U came out in 2012, it would be nuts for its lifespan to only be 2012-2016. I feel like they got a ton of bad PR from delaying Twilight Princess so much for it to turn out to be a pretty by-the-numbers Zelda with like two motion controller uses hacked into it, so delaying the Wii U Zelda into 2017 would be fucking insane of them.

I'd hate to see the guy both surprised AND upset by this. Poor soul.

Huh, this could be Twlight Princess all over again, not that there's anything wrong with that. Maybe I'll just hold out for NX instead of buying WiiU.

So, what big consoles games are coming out this year?

Please understand.

That's unfortunate. Take all the time you need though.

I'd rather it ship working and finished than broken and on time.

SHOCKING

Zelda WiiU to be marketed as a Zelda 30th Anniversary event, confirmed.

Bummer.

In other news, developing for the new consoles continues to be difficult.

@shaanyboi said:

Yeah probably. 5 years between console Zeldas is apparently where we're at now, and Skyward Sword had all that 25th anniversary stuff tied to it.

I honestly wish they'd release them more frequently (like 1998-2002 having OoT, Majora's Mask, and Wind Waker), partially because there's about a 50/50 shot that any new Zelda will play it overly safe and not interest me very much. We had Wind Waker which was awesome and different, then they played it safe with Ocarina of Time Version 2.0 I mean Twilight Princess, then they went weird again with Skyward Sword, so I suspect this will be another game where it's just link tooling around Hyrule on Epona, doing regular Triforce bullshit to stop what turns out to be Ganondorf again.

I honestly never thought it was one.

I trust Nintendo to use the delay well. And Frankly games that get delayed seem like they end up better than the ones that get rushed out the door.

I am shocked, shocked to find Nintendo pushing Zelda to next year.

Better to be delayed than to be shipped missing a whole stretch of content ala Wind Waker

Starfox Wii U GOTY 2015

From the moment they said Star Fox was suppose to come out before Zelda I knew this would happen.

coulda toldja that

I'm starting to think (not seriously) that the past two years of busted-ass games were a clever play to get us all to stop complaining about game delays, because I could not be less upset about this if I tried.

The Wii U isn't a new console.

I guess there's some merit to developing games to run in High Definition and requiring more time to finish them. I think Nintendo does this from time to time, and they usually turn out pretty great when they do.

The original showing looked Super early, so this isn't surprising in the slightest, also they kinda can't fuck this up, the longer its in the oven the tastier it will be.

This sucks for Zelda fans. Honestly I'm really only interested in Star Fox when it comes to Nintendo news. Or the comedy option that is the Mother/Earthbound series (lol rip).

@alex Kudos for using "paucity." Great word.

Nothing shocking here. 2015 as the year of disappointment and delays continues. At least I can catch up on a rather big backlog this year. At least Witcher 3 looks like it will be out this year and hopefully excellent.

this is another twilight princess. mark it right now, they're pushing this to release it on the NX as well as the wii u

Here's a fun PR trick for anyone out there with some bad news to drop on the unsuspecting public: wait until the end of the day on a Friday to let it out. You're way less likely to get follow-up emails from pesky journalists

If they wrote to me with that attitude, I'd probably call them pesky too.

My Wii U is going on eBay now, I just know they'll do a Twilight Princess and make it a launch title for their next console.

If I turn out to be wrong I can always get a Wii U for it next year, but I'm not having that useless dust collector sitting in my room any longer, only going to keep it this year for Zelda.

Just sold my PS4 and Xbox One too, they have no good games, this console cycle has been shit. I remember when PC gaming was apparently dying back in 05/06 and now look at it, way better than these consoles.

Well, the Wii U is clearly not Nintendo's focus any more. I hope they at least announce something like a translation for Dragon Quest VII 3DS to tide people over.

Hello :(

To hell with it, let's just push all the games into 2016 and use the next nine months to, I don't know, learn how to make soap and remake Commando shot for ahot with paintball guns.