In a recent interview with The Washington Post, Eiji Aonuma, a producer behind The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom revealed that Nintendo decided to delay the game's release in March 2022 by over a year to allow developers to add additional polish.
Aonuma revealed during the interview that the game was delayed "to make sure that everything in the game was 100 per cent to [their] standards." This is quite a long time for a video game to stay inside the studio just for polishing, something that we rarely see happen for other triple-A titles.
Tears of the Kingdom is currently the fastest-selling title in the series' history as well as the highest-rated game of 2023 so far. Needless to say, the smooth performance of the game at launch helped it significantly to reach those spectacular milestones.
Aonuma also talked about the gameplay video that was released for Tears of the Kingdom in March. He revealed that Nintendo felt a lack of enthusiasm towards the sequel to Breath of the Wild after the game's February trailer, which convinced them to let Aonuma explain more about it in 13-minute footage. "People had not gotten their heads around the gameplay elements or where the fun might be," said Aonuma.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom managed to sell over 10 million units within the first three days of release. At the moment, Breath of the Wild is still the best-selling title in the series with over 30 million copies sold, but that doesn't seem like an untouchable milestone for Tears of the Kingdom.
Aonuma explained his vision behind Tears of the Kingdom, saying he hopes the puzzles inside the game will make players look differently at the problems in their real life and allow them to reach new resolutions. "I’ll ask him," Aunoma explains about how his son would face routine problems in life. "‘What was your goal when trying to reach this result?’ And he’ll say ‘I wasn’t really thinking much when I was doing it. I just did it,’"