Why do Japan and Zelda not mix?

[S.Peelman]

Pavolink said:

S.Peelman said:

I don't know either.

It has been declining ever since the very first game. Ocarina of Time was the exception, but basically each new iteration on consoles sells less in Japan.

Twilight Princess, the highest selling world-wide, sold less in Japan than Majora's Mask, the lowest selling game on consoles worldwide. The abysmal performance of Wind Waker HD doesn't exactly bode well for the franchise over there, even if it's 'just' a remaster. The new game will struggle to reach Skyward Sword's bad sales there (but worldwide will probably be different).
On handhelds though, the sales are all over the place. Not much of a pattern to be found there. The DS games gave it a little boost though, they did well, but A Link Between Worlds is already failing again there.

I think the franchise is just too 'western', in themes, gameplay and presentation, for the Japanese.

Darker Zeldas tends to sell better than colorful ones

TP > SS

OoT/MM > TWW

In the rest of the world yes, but I'm not seeing this correlation for Japan as The Wind Waker outsold Twilight Princess there.

It also outsold Majora's Mask, which means I did made a mistake in my first post though when I said each new iteration sold less, but that isn't helping as MM is also one of the 'dark games'. We have dark games outselling colorful games and colorful games outselling dark games. Judging by the sales, it also has little to do with installed-base, otherwise SS and especially TP would've seen an increase again. Overall, it seemingly goes down without reason, regardless of anything.

It goes: LoZ (1.69) > AoL (1.61) > OoT (1.45) > ALttP (1.15) > WW (0.89) > MM (0.73) > TP (0.60) > SS (0.37).