At the E3 Nintendo Developer Roundtable, one last (possible) Zelda tidbit was pushed our way. When discussing Wii Music, Nintendo said they would make use of songs in the public domain when selecting musical tracks for the game such as “Yankee Doodle Dandy”, but they will include some licensed tracks. Which licensed tracks would come the cheapest to Nintendo? That’s right, their own. Considering at the E3 press conference, a (embarrasing) Wii Music demonstration used the Super Mario Bros. theme, I think it’s safe to say that there will be some Zelda music in the game.

Nintendo fans will also be pleased to hear that during this roundtable, Shigsy confirmed that a new Pikmin was in the works. So - after E3, you have your new Zelda, you have your new Pikmin, you just know absolutely nothing about them. Satisfied?

While I don’t think anyone thought otherwise, Shigeru Miyamoto confirmed to IGN that Nintendo’s in-house Zelda team is working on the next Zelda for Wii. While making no official confirmation of a new DS Zelda in the works, he did mention that there are two separate teams working for each platform, implying so.

“The Zelda team in particular always works on Zelda titles. The core members of the Zelda team have for a very long time now been focused on Zelda games, and continue to focus on Zelda games, so they are hard at work and working away. And then, of course, we have the DS Zelda team as well, so even there we’re having some switching of people in and out where the DS team is mixing in with the Wii team and working on the Wii version.”

When asked about what new innovations the next game will hold, his reply seemed to be “A lot, but not too much”.

“I don’t necessarily think it will change that drastically, but I think that Zelda is a franchise that does need some big new unique ideas. And so the team right now is very focused on trying to find those ideas.”

Read the brief interview here

Thanks to CorvosKK for pointing this out in the comments section!

It’s hard to write a lengthy news article about something that didn’t happen, so I’ll make this brief. Nothing in the way of a new Zelda title was announced at Nintendo’s E3 press conference this year - the most we got was the mention that the Mario and Zelda teams are “Hard at work on new games”, by Satoru Iwata.
 
The conference was made up mainly of “non-gamer-friendly” titles such as Wii Sports Resort - which makes use of the newly announced Wii Remote add-on “Motion Plus” for more precise remote sensitivity, Wii Music - which has been in the making for a while, and Animal Crossing: City Folk - the only Nintendo game announcement which would be of any interest to “gamers”. The second most hotly-anticipated yet non-existant title, a new Kid Icarus game, was also a no-show.
 
If any news or tidbits make their way into the open during the remainder of the expo, I’ll be sure to report on them here.

It’s almost that time of year again - E3 begins on June 15th. E3 was, up until recently, the biggest video games expo there was, and while it has been shrunk somewhat in recent years, it is still a respected event, and many companies use it to make major announcements.

Nintendo’s press conference will be held on the 15th at 9AM in the California-based event. There are some things which are almost certain to be announced - Nintendo have been teasing about a new Animal Crossing game for a while now - but will the next Zelda game be announced? I’d guess that if we’re going to see a new Zelda game within the next 18 months, then yes, there will be. Twilight Princess was first unveiled at E3 2004 (who can forget Shigsy swinging his Master Sword and Hylian Shield about to introduce the game?), and given the series’ greater success in the West than the East, E3 would be the perfect place.

Be sure to check back next week - I promise to drop everything I’m doing to give you all the info you need on Zelda’s future.