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GoOnKid on 14 November 2021
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Kakadu18 said:
GoOnKid said:

Thank you, that certainly made everything a lot clearer. So, we can agree that Miyamoto's statement doesn't mean that there won't be a new 2D Mario soon because he is not in the power to decide that. However, we can also agree that there still won't be a new 2D Mario game soon because there's no need for one right now.

Concerning Skyward Sword, I would like to respond that the game still managed to sell nearly four million units on the Wii alone. We know that Breath of the Wild had the biggest budget of any Nintendo game so far and only needed two million units to break even. I guess it's reasonable to think that Skyward Sword's budget must have been significantly lower and therefore returned a nice profit. Maybe there is an offcial statement somewhere in which Nintendo speaks of a dissapointment, I don't know, and I didn't check. Then again, we will want to consider the Wi's huge install base and then things look a bit different again. Anyway, I certainly would not call these numbers a dissapointment, honestly, but I'm merely a forum dweller.

Also, as a quick addendum, Phantom Hourglass sold 5m, which is the highest number for any handheld Zelda. Not too shabby if you ask me.

Also, as another addendum, Aonuma might not be the best action gamer but I think it's still good enough. Wikipedia states that Aonuma was the director of Twilight Princess and that is pretty action packed, I guess. Wind Waker and Skyward Sword were not directed by him. Now I think it's exhausting to discuss how much influence the producer and the director have had on each game because we would barely be able to know for sure, but it's just something that I find worth noting.

Bold: afaik that was a mistranslation and it wasn't BotW breaking even at 2mil sold but them expecting their games to sell 2mil on average on the Switch.

Zippy6 said:
Kakadu18 said:

Bold: afaik that was a mistranslation and it wasn't BotW breaking even at 2mil sold but them expecting their games to sell 2mil on average on the Switch.

Yes, the 2m to break even is a false story.

Zelda: Breath of The Wild Needs to Pass 2 Million in Sales - IGN - Here is an article saying the 2m sales would break Zelda even.

Here is a link to the transcript of the meeting they are talking about, direct from Nintendo: The 76th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders - Q & A (nintendo.co.jp)

This is what Miyamoto says that is quoted in the article:

Miyamoto: "In striking that balance, while it's important that we do not overextend by putting an excessive amount of content in our games, the only solution is how to make software that sells well. There will be big hits somewhere in our business, and they support the games that fail and allow us to take on other challenges. So our basic premise is to create software that will sell in the range of at least two million units. We simply couldn't recoup our costs if we only released games in Japan that had sales of around 300,000 units, so the global market is our standard."

The IGN article includes quotes from what Miyamoto said there, but Miyamoto doesn't mention Zelda at all when he's saying this. Zelda was talked about earlier in the meeting but not linked to this 2 million figure at all.

Thank you both! I did not know that. However, I think my point still stands. Four million ain't that bad.