For Wii U owners, 2015 hasn't lived up to expectations. It was going to be a year of Zelda, Mario, and Star Fox, only for The Legend of Zelda for Wii U to end up delayed to 2016. After that, fans still clung to the hope that they'd be able to at least play Super Mario Maker and Star Fox Zero before 2015 came to a close.

The good news is Super Mario Maker did release a couple of weeks back, but unfortunately, Star Fox Zero was hit with an abrupt delay announcement,and now the highly anticipated game will not hit until early 2016. As for why the game was delayed, we did not know at the time, but now Yusuke Hashimoto of Platinum Games has come forward with an explanation.

Speaking in an interview with GameSpot, Hashimoto explains that Star Fox Zero was delayed due to quality reasons. That is, the team wanted to make sure that the game lived up to the "Platinum feel" of their previous titles.

Hashimoto went on to admit that the team had difficulty making the GamePad/television dynamic of having two screens both interesting and fun. According to Hashimoto, this is largely due to the development team's lack of experience with shooting games.

"We've been working with action games long enough. We understand how the players play an action game, how they respond to an action game, how they'll move, what they'll do in the situational stuff. What we're making here now, it's totally a new learning experience for us, which is kind of fun to find out."

So, the sudden delay of Star Fox Zero, while it leaves the Wii U's holiday lineup looking rather weak, is nothing for fans to worry about. There doesn't seem to be anything catastrophically wrong with the game or anything of that nature, and it seems unlikely that it will be delayed again. In the meantime, Hashimoto also revealed an impressive feature for the game.

Apparently, Star Fox Zero will be the first Wii U game in which both the content presented on the television screen and what's appearing on the GamePad will run at 60 frames per second. This is an extremely impressive technical achievement, though it's possible that the somewhat disappointing graphics seen in the E3 2015 trailer are a result of this desire to have the game running as smooth as possible.

Star Fox Zero's delay is a shame, but with how long players have had to wait for a new, genuine Star Fox console experience, they probably don't mind waiting a little longer so that the game can reach its full potential. After all, Shigeru Miyamoto himself once said, "A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad."

In the meantime, Wii U owners still have a few high quality games to look forward to this holiday seasons, despite the delays of Star Fox and Zelda. There's a new Fatal Frame on the horizon, the new Mario Tennis is coming in November, and Xenoblade Chronicles X is set to launch in December. Even though it appears that Nintendo is winding down their support of the Wii U in anticipation of the Nintendo NX, at least the console is going out with a bang.

How do you feel about Star Fox Zero's delay? What games will you be picking up instead this holiday season? Sound off in the comments below and let us know your thoughts.

Star Fox Zero is set to release in Q1 of 2016, exclusively for the Nintendo Wii U.

Source: GameSpot