Hyrule Warriors Definitive Edition Is What Nintendo Should Do More Of

I’ve just finally finished getting through Hyrule Warriors Definitive Edition on the Nintendo Switch, and although it has been the third time I’ve played it – first on the Nintendo WiiU and later on the Nintendo 3DS – I once again had a really great time. With each subsequent release of the game, more DLC from previous iterations have been added, giving this last release the appropriate title of “definitive edition.” This third time through, however, I quickly realized I wasn’t necessarily thinking about he game itself, but rather how Nintendo should be doing more of this in the future. Let’s dive into that further.

In years now gone, Nintendo was very restrictive about their popular IP, and understandably so. While every company has their flagship franchises, it seems that Nintendo has more of them than everyone else, perhaps combined. And for the most part, those franchises have been a well guarded secret. Slowly, however, we began to see a shift in how Nintendo dealt with all these properties, beginning to loan them out to specific companies. It began briefly first with Activision, when Nintendo loaned the Bowser and Donkey Kong characters to the Skylanders Franchise, and each was given their own dual-purpose Skylander-amiibo and associated racing kart.

From there, Nintendo went a step further, butting the licence of The Legend of Zelda into the hands of the Dynasty Warriors developers to create Hyrule Warriors (the original version); finally, everyone thought Nintendo had lost all their marbles when they licenced out the Mario franchise to Ubisoft to create a fantastic Mario and Rabbids crossover title. Nintendo has been careful about who it lends it’s properties too, but for the most part, they have been wildly successful. And in my opinion, Nintendo should look to do this more often.

There is only so much time and resources available to Nintendo and the studios under their large umbrella. Allowing someone else to step in and develop using their properties is a good way to create more great Nintendo content, without stretching thin the resources available with Nintendo itself. What future projects could look like, I really don’t know. However, it would be fantastic to see more of this in the future. Nintendo took a huge step when they handed over the Mario Licence to Ubisoft, and The Legend of Zelda licence to Koei Tecmo / Omega Force / Team Ninja. These were huge steps of faith by the company, and they have panned out extraordinarily well.

Who would you want to see Nintendo partner with next?