But that was Metroid itself, which has just been on terminal decline in that region for a while (pending Other M results anyway, fingers crossed). I'm saying that they are good at making Metroid-esque games, which is established, i am also saying that the top-selling Zelda titles in Japan (the NES games) had many Metroidy elements to them (not much of a stretch), and the extrapolation is if Retro made a Metroidy Zelda, it would do better, given that Japan is reasonably more receptive to the Zelda franchise itself than to Metroid

Metroid Prime being a Metroid game was the turnoff, not necessarily Retro's interpretation of it

the declining sales of the 2D metroids would concur with this (fusion at .18 while at 1M in the us...)

so basically that was a useless exercise :P

The big problem with Zelda was when Miyamoto stopped being in charge. With Anouma the series has lacked surprise and there's too much focus on story. I remembered reading once how Miyamoto told Anouma that story was not so important, but he insisted in it. Now recently Anouma didn't wanted Motion Plus but Miyamoto insisted in it.

Zelda has become very predictable now and very puzzle oriented. Every game now you know you'll get Boomerang, Master Sword, Shields, HookShot, Arrows etc. I agree with Malstrom about the lack of Arcade gameplay. There's no challenge now with Zelda, it doesn't matter how big the adventure is if you not feel your'e kicking ass.

Motion can revitalize it but I also think the difficulty should be increased. And new weapons should be added to surprise the player. Less puzzles and more action, is what the old Zelda formula was about.

Edit: Oh, why Zelda in Japan do not sell as well maybe has to do with the lack of challenge but I don't know. I believe Zelda has been in decline in all the world, the sales in America have remained consistent but it is not a phenomena nowadays like it was in the Snes era. Is only a matter of time that sales start declining in America unless something is done. Maybe japanese grew tired of Zelda long ago, and a more "mature" Zelda was not enough to get them interested.

This isn't particuarly relevant. The games continue to be more and moe popular over timei nt he Americas, not less. Link to the Past doesn't comapre to Twilight Princess in terms of American sales. It is not even close.

Zelda is not in decline "in all the world". The only territory where that is true is Japan.

interesting observation, i have no clue as to why this would be happening (decreasing percentages & sales in Japan)

though i did notice that there isn't much coverage on Zelda games in japanese media such as famitsu which regularly puts out "most wanted games" lists consisting mostly of RPGs and monster hunter yet no mention of Skyward Sword. I mean they even included Shadow Tower for Wii but no Zelda >_>

probably started happening after ocarina, where wetern sales weren't as high so the decrease in Jp sales wouldn't have been noticed in terms of percentage, until Zelda TP where the game sold incredibly well in the west vs pretty bad in japan

I was about to say "time for a revival of 2D Zelda? ^_^" When I then got the idea to look at how Four Swords Adventure performed in Japan (a more recent 2D Zelda on the GC). Even though it was a smaller game, I was wondering if it would have performed better for being 2D, much like Mario sales have been.

But after looking at your list I see you somehow forgot to add Four Swords Adventure into the list. Did you merely forget about it, or did you purposely leave it out?

I wonder how a 2D Zelda would do. It might very well be that Japanese gamers prefer the more simplistic style of 2D which also allows for more creative interpretations of the game. Many 3D games have a way of explaining too much without leaving enough for the player to invision.

EDIT: I see you don't have Minish Cap either, which was a straight up 2D game, and I also see you explained that you only counted games that we have sales data for in both regions. I am going to assume the reason you didn't include those two games is because of a lack of sales data. It would be nice if we could get that data, but again if VGC doesn't have data, the games must not have performed all that well.

wfz I actually have Minish Cap right there

Four Swords kidna slippd my mind, but I also hold it's not a mainline Zelda

^^ I think this makes a lot of sense

Most of Nintendo's other hugely successful franchises have no other strong competitors but Monster Hunter is a pretty big franchise and has been for a while now, i think they seem close enough to some people that they might consider one over the other

The GC wasn't very popular at its time and Monster Hunter was on the rise and the Wii mainly atracted new people while people were migrating to handhelds Monster Hunter continued to get more popular

they may not be exactly the same but it's still a guy running around a big world with different weapons killing monters in an action/adveture/sorta RPG-ish fashion... just lacks some puzzles

I never realised this.  They must be bored with the formula