Tears of Kingdoms delayed a year to focus on polish

It turns out that “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom” has been in production for about a year, and the rest of the time is polished by one person.

Back in March 2022, Nintendo decided to delay The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom from its 2022 release window to Spring 2023, and it’s apparently out in the wild now (no pun intended). It’s always been clear that 2022 is the game’s target release year, but that’s not guaranteed, so the delay isn’t a shock. Now, according to The Washington Post’s Gene Park, the reason for the delay wasn’t because the game wasn’t technically ready; it was to polish it.

Parker recently spoke with Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma in an interview with The Washington Post, but shared an anecdote that didn’t make it into the final product. “When Eiji Aonuma announced the delayed launch of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in March 2022, he stated that the game was almost done,” Park shared in a tweet. “The last year was spent on polishing, making sure the game’s wild physics were on track.”

A lot of times game delays happen simply because they’re not ready to go out, and release dates are more about pleasing executives than anyone else. As games get bigger, they’re becoming more common, but it’s clearly worth it for Nintendo to delay the game for so long; after all, it’s the highest-rated game of all time on OpenCritic.

The sales volume of “Tears of the Kingdom” is also extremely hot. In just three days, the sales volume exceeded 10 million sets, beating last year’s hit “Elden Ring” in one fell swoop, and being on a par with the ever-best-selling “Pokémon: Scarlet Violet”.