For many, Nintendo’s E3 press conference had one vital missing Link (pun intended). However, the reason for the next Zelda game’s absence was quite simple, it’s not ready yet. In an interview with Wired, Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto explains that while a team is hard at work developing the core mechanics of what will eventually turn into the next incarnation of the legendary franchise for the Wii, he didn’t want them wasting time and effort on producing a trailer for the sake of a little media buzz and a few squeels of delight from fans.

“I think the videogame industry has adopted a bit of a bad habit in this idea of announcing games long before they’re ever going to release. In terms of the media briefing itself, for us that’s a place where we’re going to talk about our business for the coming year and the products that we’re going to release over the next 12 months or so.” He added, “We felt that it was important to focus on the Metroid announcement, and that the announcement of a Zelda game was not as high of a priority. It’s a particular challenge for me, and the way that I develop games, because we tend to not release games before they’re done, and that makes it hard to announce things very far in advance.”

Whilst it is certainly brave of Nintendo to willfully hold back on one of its potentially biggest headline makers, whether it was shrewd or a missed promotional opportunity is yet to be seen. In the interview, Miyamoto also confirmed that any new Zelda title would make use of Wii Motion Plus, and that they’ll try to push the technology through WIi Sports Resort before the next Zelda lands on shelves.