So far, things have been going as most expected for Nintendo and their various mobile projects. Miitomo (Free) was a cute novelty that was popular for about the same length of time as Pogs, Super Mario Run (Free) did about as well as a $10 auto-runner could be expected to, and Fire Emblem Heroes (Free) has been making money hand-over-fist. Their next game, Animal Crossing, has been taking a little longer than expected to finish development, but word is already spilling out as to what comes after.
Or rather, who. Fresh off the system-selling hit The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Nintendo apparently plans to bring Link and friends to mobile sometime after the release of Animal Crossing, according to sources that talked to the Wall Street Journal. Nintendo and DeNA have declined to comment on the matter, but the Wall Street Journal has proven quite reliable with these matters in the past. Plus, it’s not exactly the most unexpected thing in the world. Mario has already broken the “major character" mobile barrier, and The Legend of Zelda is not only one of Nintendo’s biggest brands, it’s also quite hot at the moment.
We’ll be keeping our eyes and ears open for some actual confirmation of this information, but we felt it was worth passing on the rumor for now. Keep the requisite grains of salt handy, of course. The real question is, what form would this game take? It wasn’t too hard to imagine what Mario, Fire Emblem, or Animal Crossing might look like on mobile, but how could they make Zelda work for the market? I suspect we’ll see soon enough.
