The Legend of Zelda series is celebrating its 35th Birthday this week, but happenings over at Japanese giant Nintendo unusually muted for their Hero of Time. But an insider reports that the reasoning for this is down to Mario’s birthday and the upcoming Skyward Sword HD release.
Venture Beat’s Jeff Grubb, who has previously proven a reliable source regarding Nintendo, reports that there is an intention to celebrate the anniversary of Link and friends. However, Nintendo is unlikely to announce anything until the summer of this year, once the release of Skyward Sword HD for the Switch is done.
Grubb states that Nintendo is currently using Mario for its marketing campaigns to celebrate the plumber reaching the big 3-5. While there have also been rumors that Wind Waker and Twilight Princess could make their way to Switch, Nintendo does not want to announce anything at the possible expense of Skyward Sword HD’s sales, the report says.
“This is still marketing,” Grubb says. “The company doesn’t want other Zelda games to distract from its attempts to bring back Skyward Sword.”
Skyward Sword is due to launch on July 16, so with Nintendo trying to protect sales of the game, any celebrations for the Zelda series are unlikely to kick off until around August.
It’s also no surprise that the Japanese giant is focusing on the re-release; the sales of the game’s original release on Wii were lackluster compared to other entries in the series, reaching around 3.6 million units shipped. By comparison, Wind Waker, which released on a much less popular console, reached 4.43 million copies sold on the GameCube. Nintendo will be keen to improve those numbers with the HD release.
Published: Feb 23, 2021 05:05 am