2017 – Year of the Wild

To sum up the year 2017 for the Zelda franchise in four words: Breath of the Wild! It's essentially all that needs to be said about the year. We waited for this game ever since its announcement in early 2013. And in the last four years we had a good ride, where Nintendo kept us entertained with various Zelda side projects and remasters: the Wind Waker HD, A Link Between Worlds, Hyrule Warriors, Majora's Mask 3D, Tri Force Heroes, Twilight Princess HD, Hyrule Warriors - Legends... There was a lot to play in the meantime, but we now finally got the main dish, the big new Zelda.

Naturally, Nintendo put a big focus on this game for the entirety of the year. No distractions, no other Zelda announcements, just Breath of the Wild and everything that came along with it. The new Zelda was probably Nintendo's largest and most expansive project yet and this is why it had to sell things. And selling things it did. While it was also released on the Wii U, Breath of the Wild was the driving launch title for the Nintendo Switch in March, Nintendo's new gaming system. For the Switch version there were the Master and Special Editions available in North America, as well as the Limited Edition in Europe. And as if this wasn't enough, Nintendo also released the "Explorer's Edition" for Black Friday together with a map and a guide book.

The game also sold amiibo on top of that. A series of nine Breath of the Wild amiibo got produced over the year: five at launch and the four Champions in November. Three additional Link amiibo in the Legend of Zelda series also got released in June and were mainly supported by this game. So, that's a total of twelve Zelda amiibo over the entire year, certainly a record...

And Breath of the Wild sold DLC, for the first time in the main series. With the Expansion Pass we got the Master Trials DLC Pack at the end of June and the Champions' Ballad DLC Pack just three weeks ago, so we had something to look forward to for the entirety of the year.

Meanwhile, two new Zelda Books have been released in Japan: Hyrule Encyclopedia and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Master Works, where the latter focuses entirely on artwork, concept and the creation process of Breath of the Wild. Both of these will likely make it to the West next year, where Hyrule Encyclopedia is scheduled to be released on April 28th, 2018 by the publisher Dark Horse.

Metroid in 2017 and 2018

As a side note, the Metroid franchise, Nintendo's other great Action Adventure series, finally saw its return in 2017 with the solid remake, Metroid: Samus Returns. In 2018 we will certainly learn more about the upcoming Metroid Prime 4, maybe the game even will be released in the same year. In any case it's also exciting times for Metroid fans.