Ubisoft Milan, the studio behind Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope, spent part of 2023 building a prototype for a Legend of Zelda spin-off starring Ganondorf as the lead character, according to a report from Insider Gaming published September 24, 2026. Nintendo reportedly requested the protagonist swap itself, then rejected the finished prototype months later, effectively ending the two companies’ collaboration. The story has since been corroborated by Kotaku, GoNintendo, and several other outlets citing the same sourcing.
It is a strange footnote in Zelda history: a French-Italian publisher best known for Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry quietly prototyping a game built around Nintendo’s most famous villain, only for the project to die before anyone outside the two companies knew it existed. Three years later, the wreckage of that collaboration is spilling into public view at a moment when Ubisoft is already fighting for its financial life and Nintendo is riding record Switch 2 sales. Nintendo Life reported in September 2026 that its account draws on roughly 18 months of reporting and independent corroboration before publication, and sources describe Goliath as a stand-alone spin-off rather than a sequel or prequel to any existing Zelda storyline. The timing makes the story land harder than it might have in 2023.
Don't miss new tech stories on Google
Add Tech Insider once in the Google app and our stories appear in your news suggestions.
What Ubisoft was reportedly building: the Goliath prototype
According to the reporting, the project was internally codenamed Goliath, a name that, per GameSpot’s account of the story, reflected the scale of what Ubisoft Milan was trying to build. My Nintendo News reported in September 2026 that development actually traces back to 2022, a year earlier than previously understood, with the formal pitch to Nintendo following in 2023, shortly after the studio shipped Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope. Riding the goodwill from that release, Ubisoft Milan creative director Davide Soliani is said to have pitched Nintendo on a new Zelda spin-off, originally built around an unnamed, new protagonist rather than an established character from the franchise, a detail GamesRadar+ has separately corroborated.
Nintendo’s response is the detail that makes this story unusual. Multiple outlets report that Nintendo did not reject the pitch outright, instead reportedly telling Ubisoft it liked the concept but wanted the protagonist changed to Ganondorf, the recurring antagonist of the Zelda series and the physical form of Ganon in games going back to the original 1986 Legend of Zelda. IGN reported in September 2026 that this protagonist swap request came directly from Nintendo in 2023, and Insider Gaming’s account, as cited by Nintendo Life, specifies that Ganondorf would reportedly have been the fully playable lead rather than a supporting figure. That is a significant ask: Nintendo does not hand its most valuable villain to a third-party studio lightly, and doing so would have made Goliath one of the only Zelda-adjacent games built primarily around Ganondorf’s perspective rather than Link’s.
Ubisoft Milan made the change. Reporting from TheGamer cites an unnamed ex-Ubisoft developer describing the ambition behind the project, stating the team wanted to create a new big bang in the video game universe. IGN’s September 2026 reporting puts the prototype deadline at late 2023, and the studio reportedly worked through that year to deliver a playable build on schedule, with the finished prototype shown to Nintendo in November 2023.
Why Nintendo reportedly rejected the prototype
The specific reasons for the rejection have not been reported by any outlet covering the story, including Insider Gaming’s original piece. What is consistent across the coverage is the outcome: Metro’s September 2026 reporting confirms Nintendo turned down the prototype in November 2023, and the two companies’ communication about the project reportedly stopped in early 2024. GameSpot’s reporting adds that Nintendo and Ubisoft had follow-up discussions about other, unspecified Nintendo IP projects after the Goliath rejection, but those talks reportedly fizzled out entirely rather than producing a replacement project.
That silence is notable given how public Nintendo has otherwise been about its franchise plans in 2026. The company used its September Nintendo Direct slate to confirm a Zelda 40th anniversary celebration, and Zelda-branded Switch 2 hardware has been selling out within hours of release. A canceled, unannounced Ganondorf spin-off simply never entered that public narrative, which is part of why the story is breaking now rather than in 2023 or 2024 when the actual events took place.
The Ubisoft Milan team’s exit and Day 4 Night
The clearest, most verifiable thread in this story is what happened to the people who built Goliath. Davide Soliani, along with colleagues Cristina Nava and Gian Marco Zanna, left Ubisoft in July 2024, roughly seven months after the prototype’s rejection. The trio founded a new independent studio, Day 4 Night, and have since spoken publicly about leaving Ubisoft after what they described as an ambitious project they were involved in not getting to see the light of day, without naming the project at the time.
Day 4 Night’s first announced game is Bradley the Badger, described in coverage as a platformer with an ambitious premise and fourth-wall-breaking concepts. The studio’s public messaging about its origin story now reads very differently in light of the Goliath reporting: what sounded like generic startup-founder language about pursuing creative independence appears to have been a direct reference to the canceled Zelda spin-off.
Ubisoft’s response and what remains unconfirmed
Ubisoft has declined to comment on the reporting, according to Insider Gaming’s original story and the outlets that followed it. Nintendo has not issued a public statement either. That leaves the story in the same category as most major unannounced-game reports: sourced but not officially confirmed by either company named in it. Readers should treat the Goliath project, its November 2023 rejection, and the description of Nintendo’s protagonist request as reported claims rather than confirmed facts, pending any statement from Ubisoft or Nintendo.
What is on firmer ground is the timeline of the Day 4 Night departures, since those are public, dated events independent of anonymous sourcing: three named individuals left a named studio in a specific month, and formed a new company that has since announced a specific game. The connection between that departure and the Goliath cancellation is what multiple outlets are now reporting, sourced to people described as having knowledge of the project.
Historical context: how rare is a third-party Zelda project
Nintendo has handed Zelda development to outside studios only a handful of times in the franchise’s 40-year history, and almost always under close internal supervision. Capcom developed the Game Boy Color Zelda titles in the early 2000s. Vanpool built the Nintendo DS entry Spirit Tracks. Grezzo, a studio staffed partly by Zelda series veterans, has handled multiple remakes, including work tied to the Switch 2-era Ocarina of Time remake. In every one of those cases, the outside studio worked from an existing Zelda template rather than pitching original concepts built around Nintendo’s core cast.
A Ganondorf-led spin-off pitched and partially built by a studio with no prior Zelda credit would have broken that pattern entirely. It is closer in spirit to Nintendo’s arrangement with Koei Tecmo on the Hyrule Warriors spin-offs, which also repurpose Zelda characters and settings outside Nintendo’s internal development teams, except Goliath was reportedly an original narrative concept rather than a licensed spin-off in an established sub-genre.
| Third-party Zelda collaboration | Studio | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Zelda Oracle series (2001) | Capcom / Flagship | Released, two paired titles |
| Spirit Tracks (2009) | Vanpool | Released |
| Hyrule Warriors series | Koei Tecmo / Omega Force | Released, multiple entries |
| Ocarina of Time remake | Grezzo | Reported for Switch 2, per prior leaks |
| Goliath (Ganondorf spin-off) | Ubisoft Milan | Reportedly rejected in prototype stage, Nov. 2023 |
The market impact: Ubisoft’s timing problem
This report lands while Ubisoft is dealing with one of the roughest financial stretches in its history. The publisher posted a roughly €1.5 billion annual loss and scrapped seven games in its most recent reporting cycle, and it has separately pulled its own Ubisoft Connect launcher functionality from Steam, a move tied to broader cost and distribution pressure covered in earlier Ubisoft Connect coverage. Layoffs across the studio system have been part of a wider industry pattern this year, one tracked in reporting on 2026 game industry job cuts that has specifically named Ubisoft as one of the hardest-hit publishers.
Against that backdrop, a story about a scrapped Nintendo collaboration reads as one more data point in a pattern rather than an isolated incident. Ubisoft Milan had shipped Rayman Legends Retold, a Switch 2-era release covered in prior Rayman Legends Retold performance reporting, but Northeast Times reported in September 2026 that Ubisoft Milan was later shut down amid the wider wave of 2024 departures that included director Davide Soliani, leaving three of its senior creative staff now running an independent company instead.
For Nintendo, the story carries almost no financial risk. The company has had its strongest console launch in its history with Switch 2, and Zelda-branded hardware has been selling out within hours and reselling well above retail. Nintendo shares did see a short-term dip tied to a separate Zelda remake reveal earlier this year, a reaction detailed in coverage of the Zelda remake stock reaction, but that was a market response to a real product announcement, not to unreleased, canceled content. There is no indication a canceled prototype from three years ago will move Nintendo’s stock in any direction.
Competitive comparison: what a Ganondorf game would have meant
It is worth sizing up what a completed Goliath might have competed against, even hypothetically. Villain-perspective spin-offs are a well-worn genre move: Capcom has built entire sub-series around antagonist viewpoints, and Sony’s first-party catalog includes several protagonist-flip experiments. A Ganondorf-led Zelda game would have entered a market where players have shown consistent appetite for playable-villain framing, but it would also have carried unusual risk for Nintendo specifically, since Ganondorf’s mystique in the Zelda formula depends partly on him staying a distant, rarely-playable threat rather than a fully humanized lead.
Ubisoft, for its part, has direct experience shipping antagonist-driven spin-off content through its own catalog, and Ubisoft Milan specifically had just proven it could handle a beloved Nintendo-adjacent property with care through its work on Mario + Rabbids. That track record is likely why Nintendo entertained an original pitch from an outside studio at all; Nintendo has historically been far more conservative about which outside partners get access to its flagship characters than publishers like Sony or Microsoft are with their own franchises. Losing that trust, even informally, after a single rejected prototype may be part of why follow-up talks about other Nintendo IP reportedly stalled rather than producing a second attempt.
| Company | 2026 status relevant to this story | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Ubisoft | Roughly €1.5B annual loss, seven games scrapped, ongoing layoffs | Prior tech-insider.org reporting |
| Nintendo | Switch 2 sales strong; Zelda 40th anniversary campaign underway | Nintendo Direct, September 2026 |
| Day 4 Night (Soliani, Nava, Zanna) | Independent studio since July 2024, developing Bradley the Badger | TheGamer, GameSpot reporting |
| Ubisoft Milan | Still operating; shipped Rayman Legends Retold in 2026 | Prior tech-insider.org reporting |
Why this story is surfacing now, three years later
Stories like this typically surface once the people directly involved are far enough removed from the original companies to speak more freely, whether on the record or through sources close to them. Soliani, Nava, and Zanna left Ubisoft over two years ago and have spent that time building Day 4 Night into a functioning independent studio with an announced game. That distance, combined with growing industry attention on Ubisoft’s broader struggles this year, appears to be what pushed outlets to dig into the Goliath project now rather than when it was actually happening in 2023.
It also fits a broader 2026 trend of previously undisclosed cancellations coming to light well after the fact, as laid-off or departed developers become more willing to discuss scrapped projects once they are no longer bound by active employment at the studios involved. Reporting on other 2026 game cancellations has followed a similar pattern, where the initial cancellation gets little to no coverage, and the fuller story only becomes public once former staff start new ventures and speak about what came before.
The gap between cancellation and disclosure also says something about how NDAs and severance terms typically work in the games industry. Developers who leave a major publisher are usually bound by confidentiality terms that make it difficult to discuss unreleased projects in detail for a set period after departure, which is a common explanation for why stories like Goliath tend to surface on a delay measured in years rather than weeks. By the time Soliani, Nava, and Zanna were free to speak more openly, or by the time sources close to the project were willing to talk to Insider Gaming, Day 4 Night was already a running studio with its own game in development, which likely made the eventual disclosure feel lower-stakes for everyone involved than it would have in 2024.
Predictions: what happens next
Based on the reporting pattern and both companies’ public postures, a few outcomes look most likely over the coming weeks and months:
- Ubisoft and Nintendo will most likely continue declining to comment directly on Goliath, treating it as a closed, unannounced project rather than something requiring an official statement.
- Additional outlets will likely publish their own sourcing on the story over the next week, which is typical for reports that originate with a single outlet (Insider Gaming) and then get corroborated piecemeal by competitors.
- Day 4 Night’s Bradley the Badger will likely see a visibility bump from the renewed attention on its founders’ backstory, even though the game itself has no direct connection to Zelda or Ganondorf.
- Nintendo is unlikely to revisit a third-party, original-narrative Zelda spin-off in the near term, given the company’s continued preference for internal or long-tenured partner studios like Grezzo for Zelda-adjacent work.
- Ubisoft’s ongoing restructuring makes another attempt at a high-concept Nintendo collaboration unlikely until the publisher’s financial position stabilizes, since that kind of speculative, unproven pitch work is typically among the first budget lines cut during cost reduction.
What this means for Zelda fans specifically
For fans hoping this story hints at an announced Ganondorf spin-off somewhere on Nintendo’s actual release calendar, the reporting does not support that read. Every outlet covering the story frames Goliath as dead: rejected in prototype form in November 2023, with no indication any successor project exists inside Nintendo or at another studio. The more direct takeaway for fans is context, not a roadmap: it explains, after the fact, why three well-regarded Ubisoft Milan developers suddenly left in 2024 to start their own studio, and it adds one more entry to the growing list of high-profile game projects that never made it past the prototype stage this console generation.
It is also a reminder of how tightly Nintendo controls its core IP even when working with an outside studio it clearly trusted enough to greenlight a full prototype build. Getting a full year of development funded, only to have the finished prototype turned down, is a significant outcome for any studio, and it lines up with a broader industry conversation in 2026 about how much unpaid or unreleased creative work goes into pitches that publishers ultimately walk away from.
Frequently asked questions
Was Ubisoft actually making a Zelda game?
According to reporting from Insider Gaming, corroborated by Kotaku, GameSpot, TheGamer, and other outlets, Ubisoft Milan built a prototype for a Zelda spin-off starring Ganondorf in 2023. Neither Ubisoft nor Nintendo has officially confirmed the project.
What was the project called?
The project’s internal codename was reportedly Goliath.
Why did Nintendo reject the prototype?
The specific reasons have not been reported by any outlet covering the story. What is known is that Nintendo reviewed a completed prototype in November 2023 and turned it down.
Who led the project at Ubisoft?
Creative director Davide Soliani reportedly led the pitch and development, alongside colleagues Cristina Nava and Gian Marco Zanna.
What happened to the team afterward?
Soliani, Nava, and Zanna left Ubisoft in July 2024 and founded the independent studio Day 4 Night, which is now developing a platformer called Bradley the Badger.
Is a Ganondorf-led Zelda game still happening?
There is no reporting suggesting the project or any successor is active. All available reporting describes it as canceled since late 2023.
Did this affect Ubisoft and Nintendo’s broader relationship?
According to GameSpot’s reporting, the two companies discussed other unspecified Nintendo IP projects after Goliath’s rejection, but those talks reportedly fizzled out entirely rather than leading to a new collaboration.
Has Ubisoft or Nintendo commented on the report?
Ubisoft has declined to comment, according to Insider Gaming’s original report. Nintendo has not issued a public statement.
