Nintendo Killed a Ganondorf Zelda Spin-Off — Handhelds Lose Out

Nintendo’s crown-jewel franchise nearly went to a third party again — and this time with Ganondorf front and centre. Per an Insider Gaming report, Ubisoft Milan pitched a Zelda project codenamed Goliath in the wake of Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope, originally built around a new protagonist before pivoting to a game starring the series’ antagonist at Nintendo’s own request. The studio had until the end of 2023 to deliver a prototype. Nintendo rejected it, the project was canned, follow-up pitches for Star Fox and Mario went nowhere, and the talks collapsed.

That chain of events is more than trivia for anyone who plays on a Switch or a Switch 2. Every one of those third-party Nintendo collaborations — the Mario + Rabbids duology, Cadence of Hyrule — shipped as portable-first experiences, and the best of them were built for the short, resumable sessions handhelds are made for. A cancelled Goliath is one fewer banner spin-off for a Switch 2 slate that is still lean on outside-studio exclusives.

Sparks of Hope’s Slump Is the Real Reason Nintendo Said No

Sparks of Hope is the ghost at this feast. Ubisoft publicly acknowledged the sequel undersold the original, and its commercial stumble lines up almost exactly with Nintendo’s reported decision to pass on Ubisoft Milan’s next pitch. Nintendo will loan out its IP, but only when the collaborator brings something it can’t build in-house — and the Ganondorf pivot, reportedly at Nintendo’s own suggestion, reads like a publisher hedging toward brand safety rather than chasing the weird, specific hook that made Cadence of Hyrule land.

That distinction matters on a handheld. The M+R games were quietly some of the best portable tactics titles of the Switch era — long, turn-heavy battles that suspend and resume cleanly, ideal for a commute split into ten-minute chunks. Losing the next collaboration doesn’t just cost Switch 2 a banner title; it costs portable players a whole category of sessions that only a Nintendo-scaled spin-off would get greenlit in the first place.

Cadence of Hyrule Proves the Spin-Off Formula Still Works

The counter-example sits right next to it in the same era. Cadence of Hyrule handed Zelda to a small studio, bolted on Crypt of the NecroDancer’s rhythm-roguelike loop, and produced a game that lived on short, repeatable runs — the most portable-friendly structure there is. Nintendo has shown it will say yes to a spin-off when the mechanic is distinct enough to justify lending the brand.

It’s also worth being precise about what Goliath actually was: a prototype that didn’t clear Nintendo’s bar. The report covers the protagonist pivot and the 2023 deadline — no genre, no engine, no platform target. This isn’t a finished game buried in a vault; it’s a pitch that normal, unglamorous process killed. The handheld-relevant takeaway is simply that another attempt to expand Zelda beyond Nintendo’s own teams failed.

Switch 2’s Outside-Studio Spin-Off Pipeline Just Got Narrower

The aftermath points to where Nintendo’s collaboration appetite is heading. Davide Soliani, Cristina Nava, and Gian Marco Zanna — the creative spine of Mario + Rabbids — now run Day 4 Night and are building Bradley the Badger, an original platformer with no Nintendo IP attached. Nintendo’s remaining external work leans toward remakes, and its headline Zelda bets, from the rumoured Ocarina of Time remake to the live-action film, are staying tightly controlled in-house.

So read this as a signal rather than a one-off. Expect fewer risky Zelda and Mario experiments from outside studios and more safe remakes and first-party tentpoles on Switch 2. If Cadence of Hyrule-style oddities were part of why you kept a handheld in your bag, that pipeline just narrowed — and the next one may not come from a Ubisoft at all.