Zelda Tears of the Kingdom release date caps Nintendo’s flurry of announcements

Nintendo showed no signs of slowing down in its Switch console business on Tuesday with an online showcase that revealed major releases through 2023.

Driving the news: Nintendo’s show-closer was a short trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the King, the repeatedly delayed sequel to its 2017 Switch launch, Breath of the Wild.

• Having missed a late 2022 release, it is scheduled for May 12, 2023.

Nintendo also announced:

• Fire Emblem Engage — The latest in Nintendo’s turn-based strategy series, due out January 20, 2023.
• Kirby’s Return to Dreamland Deluxe — A remake of a Wii multiplayer action game scheduled for February 24, 2023.
• Octopath Traveler 2 – A role-playing game from SquareEnix for February 24, 2023.
• Lunar Eclipse Fatal Frame Mask – A port of a Wii horror game that was previously only released in Japan, due in early 2023.
• Pikmin 4 – The long-awaited sequel to controlling armies of tiny plant men (teased by Nintendo developers since 2015) due out in 2023.
• GoldenEye 64, Pilotwings 64 and other classic Nintendo 64 games coming “soon” to the company’s Nintendo Switch Online subscription service.

The big picture: Nintendo’s Switch system will be over six years old by the time the new Zelda is released, the end of Nintendo’s strong support for its consoles.

• But the system stayed hot, and Nintendo promised to support it for longer.
• Today’s announcements, which show Nintendo also dipping back into its old libraries for remasters and remakes (a favorite strategy), show that Nintendo can extend the life of the Switch for quite some time.