Nuvendil said:
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. |
Whether its multi platform or not is irrelevant to the discussion of whether it is niche or not. Multi platform games obviously have a much better chance of becoming mainstream since they reach a broader audience. Zelda cant reach a multi platform audience so it is at a disadvantage, but we dont measure mainstream or niche by the size of the platform, we measure it by the size of the market. Zelda is niche by that measure. You cant be mass market selling 4-7 million units when GTA 5 sells 80, mario kart 7 30 and even Witcher 3 selling 10+ when it's an almost identical game. Uncharted is niche - it's a great franchise, but it gets crushed by real mainstream franchises like COD and GTA in terms of sales. again, its disadvantaged by being on one platform but that' the way it is. You need to hit about 10 million to be mainstream now.
