According to the Wall Street Journal, Nintendo is currently looking to beef up its mobile platform offerings with a Legend of Zelda mobile game, likely to hit shortly after they release their mobile version of Animal Crossing. There’s no official announcement right now, so obviously you should take these as reported rumors. We do know, though, that Animal Crossing should most likely be arriving on iOS/Android in the second half of this year. It’s believed that DeNA Co., the studio behind AC mobile, will also be working on the LoZ game.
This interest in developing for mobile may seem like it’s sudden, but if you take into account their fairly solid revenue take with Super Mario Run and its outperforming younger sibling, Fire Emblem Heroes, then the shift to this sphere feels all but preordained. What’s especially notable is that Fire Emblem Heroes is a free-to-play game that brought in more cash than Super Mario Run, which retailed for $9.99 at launch. Heroes accomplished this by relying on the “gacha” model of “rolling” for heroes, a wildly popular mechanic that spurs players to drop cold hard cash for extra rolls, basically.
It stands to reason that this Legend of Zelda game could incorporate some of the same mechanics. How that would play out, I’m not sure, and it seems like nobody really will be sure for a while as there are (obviously) no details yet on what the game is going to be like. I strongly doubt, though, that we’ll be getting anything close to a full standalone entry into the Zelda saga, and some part of me thinks we’ll be getting a Hyrule Warriors-esque game with a gacha component (unlocking various heroes, etc.). But hey, that’s a total and complete shot in the dark, so don’t quote me or anything—unless it’s right, then please, go wild.
(via Polygon, image: Nintendo)
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