As Nintendo fans obsess over the codename for the Switch 2, there’re hints that Breath Of The Wild will be updated for the new console.
Now that Nintendo has confirmed that they will announce their new console sometime before next April, the number of leaks and rumours is going to increase exponentially. And some of them may even turn out to be true.
Even when coming from otherwise reliable sources, Nintendo rumours have a reputation for never quite panning out, especially in terms of software, rather than hardware, information.
It’s never really clear why that is, unless Nintendo is running its own counterintelligence operation, but the suggestion that a new version of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild is going to be released for Switch 2 is an easy thing to believe on the face of it.
Talk of a revamped version of Breath Of The Wild first emerged last August at Gamescom, when multiple sources reported that a tech demo was shown to developers. Unusually though, Nintendo went out of their way to deny the Switch 2 was at the event, which is something they never usually do – especially for something where there’s no evidence anyway.
Regardless of whether it was at Gamescom or not a remastered Breath Of The Wild does make a lot of sense as a launch title, given it’s a prime opportunity to show off how much more powerful the new hardware is (although what Nintendo might charge for it, if you already own the original, can only be guessed at).
Fast forward to today and well respected Japanese leaker Midori suggests that Nintendo is working on a project with the peculiar codename of U-King-O.
At first it seems impossible to guess what that might be, but it turns out that U-King was the codename for the original version of Breath Of The Wild. So it’s not much of a stretch to imagine that this is a new version for the new console (whose name or codename perhaps begins with O).
Alternatively, it may relate to a new game using Breath Of The Wild as a foundation, similar to how Tears Of The Kingdom did. Nintendo already said that the next mainline entry won’t be based on Breath Of The Wild but a rumour emerged last week, from leaker PapaGenos (the capital letters of his tweet spell out ‘This is a hint’), that Nintendo is working on a new game featuring Princess Zelda as the protagonist.
That’s something that Nintendo themselves has recently hinted at, although PapaGenos doesn’t say that the new project is for the Switch 2, so it could be that it’s some kind of fill-in title for the original Switch this Christmas.
Nintendo fans have been strangely obsessed by codenames lately, with much argument over whether the word muji, which means ‘plain’ in Japanese, is the codename or not.
The latest theory is that it’s a placeholder, so as to not leak the actual codename of the console, which would basically make it a codename of a codename.
Meanwhile, leaker Mike Heskin claims the real codename has already been leaked, and was mentioned in a recent Switch firmware update, but nobody realised.
Why anyone would care is the bigger mystery though, as previous Nintendo codenames have included things like Dolphin (GameCube) and Revolution (Wii), which give nothing away about the consoles, even if you did know them.
Codenames can sometimes help with games though, as Midori has also suggested that there’s a new Nintendo project in development at the moment called Banquet.
At first that seems like useless information but the codename of Super Mario Party was Buffet, so, especially as a new entry is overdue, that could well be another upcoming game – although, again, there’s no indication of whether it’s a Switch or Switch 2 title.
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