Star Fox Zero Delayed Till 2016

This year’s E3 was underwhelming for Nintendo fans, with a strange new Zelda announced and a curious new Metroid title that had neither Samus nor many Metroids in it, causing some gamers confusion and mild frustration. But there was at least one semi-winner: Star Fox Zero, a remake and improvement over the best Star Fox game ever made, Star Fox 64. The images and video shown off during the Nintendo Direct conference was pretty cool, and it gave disappointed Nintendo fans something to look forward too.

Well. Prepare to look forward a little longer, because Mr. Miyamoto has just announced the game will be delayed to the First Quarter of next year. Oops.

I made a big decision last week.

We have been developing Star Fox Zero for Wii U with the aim of releasing it this year. Although we felt that the development had been progressing well, we now believe that we will need a little more time to work on areas such as the unprecedented discovery that we want players to experience in the game by using two screens, and further polishing the level designs and perfecting the tone of the cut scenes. While we have already reached the stage where it would be technically possible to release the title in time for the year-end holiday season, we want to polish the game a bit more so that players will be able to more smoothly grasp the new style of play that we are proposing.

To the people looking forward to the launch of the game this holiday season, I am very sorry.

Star Fox Zero is going to bring new game play and experiences that take it far beyond the framework established by Star Fox 64. All the members of the development team are doing our best so that the final product will not betray your expectations. And the game will not be delayed for a very long time – we’re aiming to launch the game in Q1 2016. Please stay tuned for further announcements.

Credit where credit’s due: missing a holiday release window just to make a game better is something most companies wouldn’t do--and I’m looking squarely at you, Ubisoft. Still, this is hardly without Precedent. It was Miyamoto himself who said “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad”... something not strictly true these days with Patches and DLC, but it’s good to see he’s doing his best to avoid pulling an Assassin’s Creed: Unity or Batman: Arkham Knight on us.

Keep on shining bright, you beautiful man.