Star Fox Zero won't make it out this holiday

Nintendo is delaying Star Fox Zero into 2016, according to a letter from Shigeru Miyamoto. The longtime Nintendo designer, who was recently anointed as official "Creative Fellow" at Nintendo (we've been saying it for years), has taken responsibility for the decision to scrap the game's November 20 launch date. As Miyamoto has expressed many times before - but not on Facebook like he's doing these days - he'd rather be tardy than stuck with a game that could have used some more refinement.

Though it's "technically possible" to usher the flight-and-combat game onto the Wii U by the time shoppers start kicking doors down this holiday, it just isn't good to go yet, Miyamoto writes. "Although we felt that the development had been progressing well," he says, "we now believe that we will need a little more time to work on areas such as the unprecedented discovery that we want players to experience in the game by using two screens, and further polishing the level designs and perfecting the tone of the cut scenes." The game's adjusted release date is somewhere in Q1 2016.

Star Fox Zero is the first new game in Nintendo's space-furring franchise since 2011's Star Fox 64 3D (a 3DS remake of the Nintendo 64 original). As we reported during the most recent E3, the control scheme on Star Fox Zero is hinged on the Wii U gamepad, making it both an apt use of the system but an eccentric process that takes time to master. Miyamoto's comments suggest that the game is being held back to not only improve the overall presentation, but to strengthen the way in which players become acclimatized to it.

Though Nintendo has the final say in delaying Star Fox Zero, it's sharing development with Platinum Games. The same Japanese studio is currently working on all games ever, including Scalebound, Transformers: Devastation and a sequel to Nier.

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