| xMetroid said: Botw top 10 in japan after all this time is insane knowing the franchise was never huge there. |
Never huge in Japan?
On Famicom, The Hyrule Fantasy (1986) sold 1.69 million units and The Adventure of Link (1987) did 1.61m, then A Link to the Past (1991) on Super Famicom sold 1.16m and Ocarina of Time (1998) managed 1.46m on Nintendo 64, a system that sold only 5.54 million units. Other titles went close to 1m too, such as Majora's Mask (2000) at ~900k, The Wind Waker (2002) at ~850k and Phantom Hourglass (2007) at ~900k.
As of September 2020, Breath of the Wild (2017) on Nintendo Switch sold 2.23m LTD and adding the Wii U version gets it to around 2.4m, the title is heading for 3-3.5m combined lifetime in Japan. Of course, doubling the previous best in the series is massive. However, it's doing far more than that in the West. Ocarina of Time sold 6.14m outside Japan and Twilight Princess did 8m on GameCube + Wii. As of September 2020, Breath of the Wild shipped 19m on Wii U + Switch overseas and is heading for around 30m lifetime, which will be close to 4 times the previous best and 5 times what OoT did. If Zelda was consistently lacking anywhere before BotW it's in the EMEAA region. The only title that could be considered somewhat of a disappointment in Japan compared to the rest of the world is Twilight Princess but with the art style and atmosphere it was going for that was to be expected.
I mean, the domestic sales figures shown above can't belong to a series that was supposedly "never huge" in Japan.
