Nintendo Scrapped a Secret Zelda Collab With Ubisoft in 2023

Nintendo just walked away from a Zelda game most of us never even knew existed, and that alone tells you how seriously the company still guards that crown jewel. According to Insider Gaming, Ubisoft Milan and Nintendo were developing a Zelda title together before the project was cancelled following its prototype phase in late 2023.

I'll give Nintendo the credit here, and I mean that without gritting my teeth this time. Handing a piece of Zelda to an outside studio at all was a bigger swing than the company usually takes, and pulling the plug rather than shipping something half-baked is the correct call every single time. That's one point I'm handing over freely.

The scoreboard read on this one is short. Nintendo loses a chunk of development time and, presumably, a chunk of Ubisoft Milan's morale along with it. Ubisoft loses a marquee credit it could have leaned on during a rough stretch for the publisher. Nobody wins outright, but Nintendo still walks away looking like the adult in the room for refusing to settle.

And Xbox, since we're comparing report cards this week, doesn't even get to have this story. You can't cancel a secret Zelda prototype when you don't have a Zelda to begin with, or a studio anyone would trust to build one.

No official confirmation of the project or its cancellation has come from Nintendo or Ubisoft, so treat this as Insider Gaming's reporting for now, not a company statement. Worth watching whether either side ever acknowledges it existed.