LogFAQs > #973403983

papercup posted...

https://www.nintendo.com/whatsnew/ask-the-developer-vol-9-the-legend-of-zelda-tears-of-the-kingdom-part-3/

What a weird way to announce that there are dungeons in this game. It feels like some marketing person at Nintendo either isn't doing their job, or the dev team is just doing their own thing and ignoring the advice from the marketing people.

The marketing for TotK has been kind of weird all around. They've tried to be so strict about what does and does not get revealed, in a way that almost seems like they're tying not to hype people up too far in advance. I know that in the last year or so they've tended toward shorter windows between announcing and releasing a game (like Xenoblade 3's announcement coming out of absolutely nowhere last February with a September release date), and with TotK they seem to be following that trend extra-strictly. The release date was only announced in September, trailers up until the last one and the fusion showcase were very limited in what they showed beyond "it's Zelda again and also there are sky islands," and they've been even more uppity than usual about leaks (not uncommon in the games industry, but this seems like a particularly egregious example).

It's possible that they're trying to keep hype to a minimum until the last minute so that it hasn't worn off by the time the game launches. I imagine there are quite a few fence-sitters that have been holding out to see what the dungeon situation is, and finding out this close to release may excite them enough to push them into buying it before they have a chance to reconsider or incorporate other new information that comes out post-launch. It's also pretty common to see long-anticipated games get hyped up so much pre-release that there's no chance that the game will live up to it and everyone ends up disappointed, so maybe they're trying to avoid it.

Either way, Nintendo's gonna Nintendo. They've never given us any particular reason to believe that they're in touch with what their customers want. They just keep doing their own thing and we happen to like it most of the time, which is honestly kind of refreshing in an industry plagued with so much manipulative marketing and monetization even if it does lead to a whole lot of questionable decisions.