No show

Nintendo didn't show the Wii U version of Zelda at this year's E3. That caused quite a bit of concern, with some fans even going as far as to speculate that it's going to be an NX title, given that Nintendo is going to be talking about the new system a whole lot more next year - when Zelda is supposed to be launching.

Unsurprisingly, Nintendo of America boss Reggie Fils-Aime has been pressed on the matter in an interview with IGN, and his response isn't exactly convincing.

Given that the conversation swings backwards and forwards between interviewer and interviewee, we've included the full thing here:

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IGN: We spoke to Miyamoto and he told us, Nintendo has some really great Zelda footage and chose not to show it at E3. Can you talk about the thinking behind that decision?

Reggie Fils-Aime: It goes back to the statement i made earlier about how we view E3. 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.

IGN: I understand that guideline and why you choose to observe that, but that must be taken on a case-by-case basis. When you guys showed Zelda last year, I would't have believed that game was supposed to come out in Q1 or Q2. I would have thought that was a Q3 game.

Fils-Aime: No, but when we showed it last year, we believed it was a 2015 game.

IGN: Do you worry at all that not showing it this year sends the message to Wii U owner and the potential Wii U buyer that Zelda is not a 2016 game?

Fils-Aime: No. I don't believe that it sends that messages. 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.

IGN: Yes, that was the reason we asked about that.

Fils-Aime: 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.

IGN: Is that based on knowledge gained from years of having to delay Zelda?

Fils-Aime: It's based on a collective belief -- and when I talk collective, I'm talking about [Satoru] Iwata, Mr. Miyamoto, myself, Tatsuya Eguchi, [Shinya] Takahashi. The collective braintrust within Nintendo. It was our collective belief that it would have a negative effect of showing a game that we knew wasn't going to be a next-six-to-eight-month-type of game.

That's not the most logical argument we've heard. Nintendo has, in the past, shown games at several different E3 events way before the final release - Super Smash Bros. being a recent example. Zelda Wii U may be some way off, but even a small look would have boosted Nintendo's showing at this year's E3.

Do you think Reggie's point is valid? Or perhaps by not showing the game at all, Nintendo has created confusion with fans? Let us know by posting a comment.

[source uk.ign.com]