Nintendo Exec: Remakes and New Games Are of Equal Importance After Ocarina of Time
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake has launched 28 years after the 1998 original and is already the highest-rated game of 2026 so far. Nintendo senior vice president of product development and publishing Nate Bihldorff says remakes and new games carry equal weight at the company, because every franchise has its own devoted fanbase and each group wants something different.
The remake reached Metacritic's top 30 games of all time within a day of release, a sign that players are as happy to revisit a classic as they are to try something entirely new.
"Of equal importance"
Bihldorff laid out Nintendo's thinking on the balance between the two. "I do think that new games and remakes both have a place in the Nintendo stable, of equal importance to be honest. There are fans of every single IP that we have out there," he said.
He added that new entries are welcome inside the company too, but that revisiting older games has its own appeal. "Of course, having new games in those series is wonderful, and I look forward to them as much as anyone else does, but there's also a deep satisfaction in revisiting games that were very, very special, like Ocarina of Time," Bihldorff said.
A first visit to Hyrule for many players
The remake is not only aimed at longtime fans. Bihldorff pointed to the players who never touched the 1998 release: "It's also important to think about how many people had never played the original, and for them, the remake of Ocarina of Time is going to be an absolutely brand-new, 2026 experience, and one that I just cannot wait for them to get their hands on."
That matters for a series with a back catalog as long as Zelda's. A remake gives newcomers an entry point to one of the franchise's best-loved chapters without asking them to track down decades-old hardware or put up with the technical limits of its era.
What it means for new Zelda games
Nothing in Bihldorff's comments suggests the remake is replacing original work. Fans are still waiting for the next mainline announcement after Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, and Nintendo's stance, as he describes it, is that both kinds of release serve audiences that overlap but are not identical.
For now, the strong critical reception and the quick climb up Metacritic's all-time rankings give Nintendo a solid argument that remakes can sit alongside fresh releases without undercutting them.
