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curl-6 on 13 August 2023
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Slownenberg said:
curl-6 said:

Yeah the sheer magnitude of BOTW's success relative to the series' three decades of prior history is insane.

It's already sold more than Twilight Princess, (Wii and Gamecube) Ocarina of Time, (N64 and 3DS) and the NES original combined, (the three previous top selling games in the franchise) and it's still moving at speed.

It's not a flash in the pan either as Tears of the Kingdom is maintaining the new sales standard.

yeah Zelda games now outselling 3D Mario, Pokemon, and maaaaaaaybe even Smash or at least keeping pace with Smash is truly crazy. Open world Zelda not only brought the series back to being critically acclaimed the way it hasn't been basically since OoT, but has unleashed Zelda for as a sales behemoth. And no doubt with tech improvements next gen the open world design of Zelda will only get far more impressive in the next game.

Yeah few franchises have ever achieved this kind of explosion, much less after 30 years of existing as a highly acclaimed and well known series with good to decent sales.

BOTW's reinvention of the series may not be to everyone's taste, but the results cannot be refuted; Zelda is vastly more popular as an open world sandbox of systems-driven emergent gameplay than it ever was a more structured series of puzzle boxes.

And that's just software sales; its power as a system seller is arguably behind only Mario Kart and Animal Crossing now.

Last edited by curl-6 - on 13 August 2023