Weekend Hot Topic: The longest wait for a new video game

metro.co.uk:

Readers discuss the longest they’ve ever waited for a video game to be released, including the mammoth waits for Shenmue 3 and Persona 5.

The subject for this weekend’s Inbox was suggested by reader Tony T. and was inspired by the recent delay of Starfield, as well as many others this year. So we asked what’s the most disappointed you’ve been with a game delay and how did you feel when it eventually arrived?

Given how common delays are in the games industry everyone had a story to tell, but in general most people were happy to wait as long as the end result was worth it, which in most cases it was.

Worth the wait I think Nintendo has cornered the market on enormous waits for games, that are constantly delayed but always turn out to be worth it in the end. It’s got to the point to where if a game doesn’t take ages, and isn’t delayed for years, then I’d get suspicious. Not that that has ever happened, mind.

They have three obvious culprits at the moment in Zelda: Breath Of The Wild 2, Bayonetta 3, and Metroid Prime 4 which I have no idea when they’ll be out and wouldn’t believe a release date if they had one. Metroid Prime 4 is especially impressive though because they actually canned that game and started again from scratch with it. That’s not something many companies would do and as disappointing as it is I definitely appreciate it.

Of course none of this is new, all of the modern Zeldas have been delayed massively, especially Ocarina Of Time which as a kid seemed to take an especially long time to coalesce into a real game. And when it did it was the best game ever so… you can’t really ask for more than that, can you?Atom

Better to waitIt wasn’t the longest wait ever by any means but I remember getting so frustrated by the