Looking for a place to land

This Saturday, the day after tomorrow, is the 40^th anniversary of the release of the original The Legend of Zelda game. If a US company owned it, something big would be in store for the celebration. The rest of this year would be full of releases and nostalgia and hype, culminating in the live-action movie (2027) or in a not-yet-teased new 3D game, or both. But Nintendo is very much not a US company. And, unlike Pokémon (hitting its 30^th anniversary at the end of this month), ownership of TLOZ is not shared. Nintendo does exactly what it wants with TLOZ, only rarely* pressured by even sales results, much less anything else.

Speculation has been rampant for months. Actual leaks seem to have begun squishing out this week, maybe. I'm lightly ducking them, but at the high level of subject lines and headlines, they sound much like the speculation, though narrowed down to one consensus prediction. No Direct is scheduled. Two days ago, some modest quality-of-life updates released for BOTW and TOTK (which is remarkable, right? BOTW released in 2017!). Saturday is not a prime day for marketing announcements.

We would all love a teaser for an upcoming new game, not only a remake, however much we'd all like a remake (OOT and TP are the big candidates, of course). I think it's too early for an actual release announcement with a date; it's been only three years since TOTK (and two since EOW (Grezzo) and one since HW:AOI (Koei Tecmo)). I think most of us would also like a trailer for the upcoming movie, though an entire year out is a bit early in the hype cycle for that, too. It seems to me that it's not impossible that Nintendo will actually let the TLOZ anniversary pass unremarked, or all but unremarked, and then do something on its own time, perhaps with barely a nod to the anniversary, later in the year, after the Pokémon anniversary hoopla is over.

* At release, the market choked on Wind Waker's "childish" art style. Sales were infamously disappointing. Twilight Princess then followed with more the look and feel of an animated Peter Jackson LOTR movie, to great sales worldwide. However, time has redeemed Wind Waker; today, both fans and experts regard its art as "timeless," transcending the tech of its era.