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Nuvendil on 27 June 2016
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vivster said:
Nuvendil said:

Dwindling?  I would hardly say that's a fair assessment.  The original Twilight Princess is the best selling Zelda ever (not counting the absurd number of OoT rereleases :P ).  Skyward Sword sold over 4 million with the Wii's reputation shot to hell, the Wii U already announced with an HD Zelda demo being shown on it, in a year competing with Skyrim and with absolutely no advertisement whatsoever.  Not saying it will sell 13 million in its first 12 months but Zelda at launch is a heck of a lot better than most launch lineups.  I mean, Xbone had Rise: Son of Rome and the PS4 had Killzone Shadowfall as their two big exclusive games, neither one of which was memorable in any way other than technical achievements.  And yet they both had good launches and the PS4 had a great first year.  But it's more down to marketing than anything else.  Exclusives and launch titles are tools, you have to use them right.  

Yeah but how does a 5 million unit game sell 10 million NX consoles? One that's also available on the Wii U which will make people even more hesitant to switch to NX.

I'm not saying the NX will sell badly (though less than 10m for sure) but I don't think Zelda is helping it that much.

I would say Breath of the Wild is looking more potentially at Twilight Princess numbers, it's more in line with what is popular these days than Skyward Sword was back when it launched.  Also, console launch window is a good time for your heaviest hitters to land, they get a sales boost from the early adopters.  As for the Wii U version, if the NX version is visually and performance wise superior, then I imagine most will opt for that version.  Also, the Wii U's install base is pretty small, smaller than the GameCube when Twilight Princess came around.  I imagine it wil lhave minimal impact on the performance of the NX and Breath of the Wild on the NX.  And lastly, game sales don't directly correlate to their hardware boost.  At launch, it's not just about "I must have the console for THAT game" and more about a show of force from the console maker, demonstrating a commitment to heavy hitter content and/or a major advancement over its prior console.  Killzone Shadowfall has only sold a bit over 2.5 million, Knack only  1.65 mil, and Infamous: Second Son only 2.74 mil.  None of these have anything remotely close to a 50% attach rate relative to the PS4 sales at the end of 2014.  But the fact they were there combined with excellent marketing gave people confidence in the PS4 platform over the Xbone platform.  Again, exclusives and launch titles are tools.  Zelda is as strong a center piece as any.  However, it can't do it alone and we will see when the NX gets its conference what other titles will make up the 2017 NX lineup.  

Look at the Wii, a great example of making use of launch titles and first year exclusives: Twilight Princess and Wii Sports were the centerpieces (moreso Twilight Princess, Wii Sports took off way more than Nintendo thought it would) but the knowledge that Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime 3 and other high quality heavy hitters were coming really helped grab people's interest and maintain it.  Were all of those equal level successes sales wise?  No, but their presence gave the console a strong image.