The Official Legend of Zelda Thread: Echoes of Wisdom Out Today, September 26

[RolStoppable]

HoloDust said:

S.Peelman said:

I don’t get why this is a debate. TotK sold over 20M in ten months in a franchise that had an all-time sales record of under 9M (TP GC plus Wii, remakes and remasters from a decade later don’t count) before BotW, and a franchise known for having a second entry sell much less than a first entry on any given system. It also has a few million left in the tank. That’s ginormous growth. TotK selling sell is proof of nothing, it’s par for the course. I don’t see why anyone would have expected otherwise, neither here nor at Nintendo, this game has performing exactly to my personal expectations at least.

If TotK released within 2-3 years of BotW (like, say, MM) I'd say, sure, mostly same assets and engine, few different mechanics, they sell what they sell - no big deal, it's a mega expansion of sorts anyway. But it took them 6 years to release TotK, as a full-fledged sequel (which is not quite really), on an installed base of 130+ million devices, and still not hit anywhere near BotW numbers. Yeah, something's not right there from my POV.

I am getting flashbacks from the Skyward Sword discussions that happened a decade ago with this "second game on the same console is bound to sell much less", the kind of selective logic where Pokémon and Splatoon must be ignored.

Nintendo cannot be happy with how TotK has played out either. The game launched with massive hype and the whole thing deflated quickly. That's not what Nintendo is aiming for; what they want are evergreens that keep selling the hardware itself for years. If Nintendo gets complacent like the Zelda fans defending the sales of TotK, then the IP will regress and fail to sell 20m+ in the future.

The most obvious flaw of TotK is its world. The overworld is the same with changes here and there while the underworld is a disappointment; the sky is interesting, but its areas are only a tiny fraction of the whole world. While the next Zelda game will have a new world, Nintendo shouldn't just stop there and instead take the next step. BotW fixed the overworld of Zelda, but dungeons weren't even good enough to be called a work in progress. There are a lot of smaller things that should be done better too, but overworld and dungeons are really the meat of the IP and need to be done right.

The Zelda IP cannot be taken lightly by Nintendo. Since Ocarina of Time it's Nintendo's most expensive to develop IP, so all the effort has to pay off.