Officially, Nintendo will launch The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sometime in 2017, though many fans are hoping it’ll be released in March as part of the Switch’s launch lineup. Unfortunately, if you believe a new rumor from “Emily Rogers,” it’s much more likely the game will available in Summer 2017.
Breath of the Wild is shaping up to be a big game, and according to Rogers’s sources, it’s taking Nintendo much longer to localize it than they originally planned. Because of this scheduling snafu, the sources say Nintendo will need an addition four-to-six months to test Breath of the Wild for bugs, which would push its launch to next Summer:
That brings us to the month of November. More sources have now come forward and corroborated my information. They’ve told me that localization for Breath of the Wild might not be finished until the end of December. After localization is completed, this game will require between (at least) four-to-six months of testing. As I mentioned earlier, this is one of Nintendo’s largest and most ambitious games ever. The amount of testing required for a huge open-world game like this is enormous. Nintendo’s intention is to have the game as bug free as possible.
Eurogamer corroborated this proposed production schedule with their own internal sources, so it’s looking more and more likely that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild won’t be ready in time for the Switch’s launch window.
