That’s as reportedly per Nate Bihldorff, who is senior vice president of product development at Nintendo of America. Speaking during a recent episode of Kinda Funny Games Daily, Kinda Funny’s daily news podcast, Tim Gettys stated that Bihldorff told him at a recent Switch 2 press event that The Wind Waker HD’s release for the Switch 2 is still very much “on the table.”

“I did ask if having The Wind Waker on Nintendo Switch Online precludes it from the Switch 2 getting the actual Wii U port at some point, and he was very quick to say ‘no, all options are on the table,'” Gettys said (via VGC).

In addition to The Wind Waker, Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack’s GameCube launch will also bring F-Zero GX and Soulcalibur 2. Several others will arrive down the line, including the likes of Pokemon Colosseum, Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness, Luigi’s Mansion, and others.

Speaking recently during his Last of the Nintendogs podcast, journalist Jeff Grubb claimed that a remastered version of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes will be releasing “soonish”. Remasters of the Metroid Prime trilogy have, of course, been in the rumour mill for years at this point (most of the Switch’s lifecycle, in fact), and earlier this year, we did get Metroid Prime Remastered, following which Grubb claimed that the other two games in the trilogy would also be coming to the Switch down the line.

While he hasn’t provided concrete details on when Metroid Prime 2: Echoes Remastered could be announced or released, he has reiterated that though it will like feature updated visuals and controls, it probably won’t be as significant of an upgrade as Metroid Prime Remastered was earlier in the year.

In addition to that, Grubb has also claimed that “something not related to Tears of the Kingdom is happening with Zelda later this year.” That, of course, would rule out any new DLC for the open world title, and many wil be hoping that the long-rumoured ports of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD will finally be released for the Switch. Grubb has been wrong about that in particular in the past, though he hasn’t provided any specifics this time, so it remains to be seen what precisely this announcement will be (if it does indeed happen).

Of course, it’s never wise to take leaks at face value when it comes to Nintendo, so make sure to keep in mind before you go marking your calendars. Stay tuned for more updates in the coming weeks.

Now, it seems (once again) like the time for their official announcement might finally be approaching. Recent rumours have claimed that a Nintendo Direct presentation is planned for sometime in September, and during a recent episode of the Last of the Nintendogs podcast, journalist Jeff Grubb claimed that The Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD will finally be announced at the Direct presentation.

There’s no word on what launch dates the ports could be targeting, but it should be interesting to see what timeline Nintendo settles on, especially with Breath of the Wild’s sequel due out in Spring 2023.

Of course, when it comes to Nintendo, you can’t be too sure of anything until it gets officially confirmed, so for now, take this with a grain of salt.

It seems, however, that Tantalus – the studio that developed the aforementioned Twilight Princess HD for the Wii U, and more recently, brought Skyward Sword HD to the Switch – has quashed those rumours- or at least their involvement in any Switch port for the game, if one is indeed in the works. Speaking recently during a recent episode of the Fragments of Silicon podcast (via Nintendo Everything), Tantalus CEO Tom Crago said that while the studio would love to bring the remaster to the Switch, it doesn’t seem to be a priority for Nintendo.

When asked if Nintendo has approached Tantalus about bringing Twilight Princess HD to the Switch, Crago said: “No, and look, we’d obviously love to do that, but that hasn’t been a priority for Nintendo – or at least not in conversations that they’ve had with us.

“The way it works with our friends over there is we’ll jump at any opportunity we can to work on one of their titles. There’s a constant dialog between our two companies. Often there’s a little bit of time that passes between titles, and there might be other ideas that are kicked around, but in the case of Skyward Sword, some time passed and then the email comes: ‘Would you be interested in considering bringing Skyward Sword on to Switch?’ To which the answer is of course: ‘Yes we would.’ And then we enter into the conversations with Nintendo around what that might look like and eventually we get underway. So it was similar in a lot of senses in terms of how Twilight Princess (on Wii U) came to fruition.”

Those hoping to see the remasters making their way to the Switch can, of course, argue that Nintendo may very well have taken on the porting job themselves, or contacted a different studio for the same. Either way, if the Switch ports are indeed coming, we can probably say with some surety that Tantalus won’t be involved, based on Crago’s comments.

A little under a year ago, reports were claiming that the Wind Waker and Twilight Princess remasters were still scheduled to launch for the Switch, but of course, there have been no official announcements from Nintendo regarding the same in the time since then.

Apparently, however, the matter might not be as firmly shut as you’d think. Over on Twitter, Andy Robinson of VGC, who was one of the people who mentioned Summer announcements for The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, suggested that those games are still coming to the Switch, asking Zelda fans to “sit tight” and suggesting in another tweet that Nintendo’s not going to announce those games while Skyward Sword HD still isn’t out.

Skyward Sword HD is launching for the Switch on July 16, while Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is also getting new content soon. Meanwhile, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 is coming next year.

Update on this for everyone who's now flooding my mentions: predicting dates is a fool's game and I should never have used "100%" in the original tweet. Zelda fans, sit tight.

— Andy Robinson (@Andy_VGC) June 15, 2021

Correct.

— Andy Robinson (@Andy_VGC) June 15, 2021

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like that’s going to happen. At yesterday’s E3 2021 Nintendo Direct, while announcing the new Game and Watch for The Legend of Zelda, series producer Eiji Auonuma confirmed that currently, Nintendo has no specific plans for any other Switch games in the series beyond what’s already been announced.

“This year the original Legend of Zelda game reaches its 35th anniversary. While we don’t have any campaigns or other Nintendo Switch games planned, we’ve been working on this Game and Watch system as a special item to help mark the occasion and reflect fondly on the earliest days of The Legend of Zelda,” Auonuma said.

Meanwhile, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is receiving additional content soon, while it’s been confirmed that the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – or whatever it ends up being called – will launch in 2022.

2021 is the year of The Legend of Zelda’s 35th anniversary, and most have been expecting Nintendo to do something special for the occasion. Largely, the expectations have been that they will do something similar to what they did for Mario’s 35th anniversary last year, and re-release older games on the Switch. In the recent Nintendo Direct however, other than the announcement of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD, no other announcements for Zelda were made.

Recently, insiders have suggested that announcements for The Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD are still forthcoming, and in a recently published report on GamesBeat, Jeff Grubb provided some more insight into that. According to Grubb, the relative lack of Zelda announcements is driven by marketing decisions, not only because Super Mario’s 35th anniversary plans are still ongoing, but also because Nintendo wants to maximize the visibility and sales of each planned Zelda release as much as possible.

“Nintendo will want to position The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD out in front,” Grubb writes. “This is one of the biggest reasons that Nintendo didn’t talk about other Zelda beyond Skyward Sword HD in its latest Direct video event. The company doesn’t want other Zelda games to distract from its attempts to bring back Skyward Sword. Sure, it could’ve released Wind Waker and Twilight Princess at the same time, but the company wants Zelda fans all focused on Skyward Sword.”

Grubb goes on to state that Nintendo will maintain a “steady cadence” of releases to celebrate the series’ Zelda anniversary, adding that plans for The Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD are likely to be announced this Summer, shortly after the launch of Skyward Sword HD.

Meanwhile, development on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s sequel is also ongoing, with series producer Eiji Aonuma recently confirming that Nintendo will be providing a proper update on the game later in the year.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD launches for the Nintendo Switch on July 16.

In its latest Direct presentation, Nintendo announced that The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD is coming to the Nintendo Switch. Those disappointed by this news shouldn’t fret – according to two sources, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD are also coming to the platform this year. Eurogamer’s Tom Philips was the first to hint at this on Twitter.

In response to a tweet about not having to re-purchase Twilight Princess and Wind Waker this year, Philips simply said, “See you in a couple months.” Andy Robinson of VGC was far more direct though, tweeting that “Wind Waker and Twilight Princess are 100% coming this year. So that’s at least one good 3D Zelda.” These titles – if not some kind of bundle akin to Super Mario 3D All-Stars to celebrate Zelda’s 35th anniversary – have been rumored for a while so it wouldn’t be too surprising. As always, take all of this with a grain of salt.

In terms of new stuff, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s sequel will reportedly receive new details later this year. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is also getting some paid DLC courtesy of its expansion pass. The first wave drops in June and provides an “expanded roster” along with new challenges.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD is slated to release on July 16th for Switch.

See you in a couple months 🙂

— Tom Phillips (@tomphillipsEG) February 18, 2021

https://twitter.com/AndyPlaytonic/status/1362213588694368260

Meanwhile, 3DS hardware sales are down 22 percent in this quarter, with 2.49 million units sold though software sales rose by 40 percent for 16.37 million units sold in this time. Remember that this doesn’t even account for Pokemon X & Y, which released in October and sold 4 million units worldwide in just two days.

The Wii U saw a greater increase in sales – namely, a 400 percent increase which saw 5.27 million units sold worldwide. Pikmin 3 and Wind Waker HD are apparently the top two highest selling titles. Will Nintendo be able to meet its lofty forecasts? Time will tell.

Nintendo seems to be gearing up for a critical holiday season, and it seems to have some positive momentum (finally) on its side. Ahead of the NPD report that was released yesterday, Nintendo revealed that the Nintendo 3DS was the bestselling system in the United States for the fifth consecutive month in September; it is to be noted that September saw no major release for the 3DS, so it is that much more impressive. The numbers probably come from the residual effect of a smattering of excellent software released for the 3DS all throughout the year.

On the console side of things, Nintendo finally had some good news to report, as following the Wii U price drop in September, sales surged by a staggering 300%; in absolute numbers, this probably doesn’t translate to much (estimates peg it at ~93,000 units sold), but that still establishes that there is in fact a market for the platform.

It was a good month for Nintendo all around, as Pikmin 3 and Mario and Luigi: Dream Team charted in the software charts too, which is difficult for exclusive software at the best of times.

Away from the Nintendo side, the PS3 finally managed to outsell the Xbox 360 in the US, which probably bodes well for Sony ahead of the PS4 launch. We don’t have exact numbers for either system here, but no doubt Microsoft is panicking that its hold on its strongest territory might be slipping.

Nintendo should be able to carry this momentum forward to next month as well; with the release of Pokemon X and Y (which has already sold an amazing 4 million copies in 48 hours), and the budget priced Nintendo 2DS, we’ll probably see them topping the charts on both the handheld and the software front.

[ShackNews]