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MDMAlliance on 18 January 2017
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BeatdownBrigade said:
MDMAlliance said:

Just wondering where you're getting this idea from?  

3m is the lowest possible sales number I expect from Breath of the Wild.  If you look at view counts of trailers for each game, Breath of the Wild has Horizon easily beat.  

11m views for Breath of the Wild's 2016 E3 trailer
7.5m views for Horizon Zero Dawn's 2016 E3 trailer

Both of these are the respective games' most viewed trailers on YouTube.

I know views don't translate to sales, but from a sheer recognition point of view, I don't see how you are getting your numbers.  
Another thing to point out is that Horizon is PS4 exclusive, and Breath of the Wild will have a Switch and Wii U release (this increases the effective install base by a considerable amount over time and gives Breath of the Wild better legs than Horizon for launching on a new system).  There's also something else you might need to know, though.  Install base means very little for games like The Legend of Zelda.  See: Windwaker (over 4m on a system with about 20m) and Ocarina of Time (over 7m on a system with a little over 30m).  

To be fair, something like Skyward Sword also sold like 3.6 million on a console with an install base of 100m. In fact most Zelda titles only sell in the 3-4 million range outside of like 3 of them. I'm not gonna take guesses as to what is going to sell how many or who will sell more. Futile argument right now without knowing how good either game is being reviewed and how popular the Switch ends up being. Horizon is a new IP so historically that typically changes sales expectation, and on the flip side most people seem to over-estimate truly how much of a unit pusher Zelda has been historically just cause of its name and nostolgia.

You're kind of proving my point that install base means little to the Zelda franchise.  Skyward Sword was also released near the end of the Wii's life time, and that DOES matter.  Twilight Princess, on the other hand, sold really well (and is more comparable to Breath of the Wild, being at the end of Gamecube and start of Wii).  

I don't think it's an over-estimation to say 3m is the absolute minimum for Breath of the Wild, given the huge hype behind it.  It can turn out to be a crap game, but that doesn't change the fact that 3m is probably going to be sold through near the launch of the game.  However, I highly doubt it'll be a crap game given how much it's been demoed already and how much people have liked it so far.  At worst it'll be mediocre.