If BOTW passes 10 million then it will no longer be niche - I doubt it will pass 10 million, I expect around 7-8 million. But if it does pass 10 we'll call it mainstream. Until it does though its conjecture. 

Dude...wat are you on about? 

First, 4 million is not an indie number.  That's a massive runaway success for an indie.  The overwhelming majority of indie games can only dream of hitting 1 million sales.  95% of indies would KILL to sell 4 mil.  Shoot they would kill to sell ONE million. 

Second, Skyward Sword failed to reach 4 million due to 1) launching at the tail end of the Wii's lifecycle, 2) launching AFTER the successor system was announced, and 3) having its production cutoff far earlier than a typical Zelda game would have.  That last bit made it quite literally impossible for the game to reach its full sales potential. 

Third, just for the record, Twilight Princess sold nearly 9 million.  Just fyi

Fourth, all those games you mentioned are *multiplatform*, Zelda is exclusive.  Only a small handful of exclusive IP have ever been capable of 10 million once, much less consistently.  Only one Halo sold over 10 million.  No Uncharted game has yet to sell 10 million (in fact, no Naughty Dog game has, iirc).  Are those niche franchises? 

Fifth, 10 million being the standard for mainstream is absurd.  Consistently selling over 4 million and often selling significantly more is not "niche".  And as for your SE example, that has nothing to do with mainstream vs niche, that has to do with budget vs revenue. Square Enix is notorious for their overspending and extravagant budgets, that's why they NEED their games to sell as many as they do.  Have a high enough budget and even 10 million won't do you any good. 

In short, Zelda is not niche, you don't seem to understand the meaning of the term, stop trying to sell it cause the argument isn't going to fly.  Because the argument is nonsense.

That's how I feel too XD The magic of Zelda really feels dead in BotW. I can't explain it either. One of the biggest changes I hate is the music. Atmospheric music is the big trend for games right now and all it does is force the composer to make generic music thats easily drowned out. There's no energy to it, it's limp

BOTW is amazing but i totally agree music seems very flat compared to previous entries. Thank god it has the best gameplay off the entire franchise imo

BOTW is amazing but i totally agree music seems very flat compared to previous entries. Thank god it has the best gameplay off the entire franchise imo

Persona had a high aggregate and reception too. Arrogant to say "only Zelda." 

Nothing to do with preference. 

I think this whole debate rests on the fact that you're using your own version of the word niche which in reality doesn't fit any of the franchises mentionned. The best definition of niche that I found is in French but I'll translate it best I can to English : 

Un marché de niche est un marché très étroit correspondant à un produit ou service très spécialisé. Le fait de viser un marché de niche permet souvent d’être confronté à une concurrence moins forte, mais les volumes de ventes potentiels sont naturellement plus faibles.

In English: A niche market is a very narrow market that corresponds to a very specialized product or service. Targetting a niche market often allows to face weaker competition but the potential volume of sales in naturally smaller.

Zelda, Uncharted, God Of War, Horizon, any franchise that sells multiple million copies doesn't fit this definition. I guess your intention is to differenciate these series with the franchises that sells over 10m copies like CoD, Mario Kart and GTA and I agree with you that there should be two different terms for each category but "niche" is not the term you're looking for.