I am seeing the reviews of Skyrim, and Skyward Sword, and it looks like Skyrim is getting a lot more buzz and excitement than Skyward Sword, and has more attention.  

Is it possible to say the heart of videogame interest now rests more with Elder Scrolls franchise than that of Zelda at this point?

Edit: Subject header fixed.

i think you mean elder scrolls. Oblivion was just one of the games in the elder scrolls series like skyrim. Anyway I don't really think it did. Both games came out after a slew of games got very good reviews (90+ metacritics) and both got great reviews themselves. The games aren't similar enough for someone to be able to say skyrim does everything better and so zelda needs to get a lower review score than skyrim. They have completely different strengths and weaknesses.

First off, the franchise name is Elder Scrolls, not Oblivion

Secondly, it does seem to have stolen Zelda's limelight rather neatly. I don't see the appeal, of course, but then again open-ended WRPGs have never agreed with me in the worst way possible.

I would attribute it largely to the fact that "Core" gamers (though i shudder at this categorization and wish for one better) have largely given up on the Wii, such that SS is not receiving more hype, and then you have the fact that the franchises are very similar

In many ways, Skyward Sword needed to come out sooner in the Wii's life, for more significance in the core gaming community and more impact with the expanded audience, as well as doing more to prove the ability of motion controls. The game itself was poorly positioned in terms of the amount of impact it could have had.

As far as forum hype and goty awards Skyrim might take Skyward Sword's expected cut of these things, but if you want a more clear picture of if Skyward Sword's general interest has been taken by Skyrim you'll have to wait and see what the long term sales of Skyward Sword turn out to be, and even then there'll be other mitigating factors like how late in the console's life it released so Skyward Sword may get a lower lifetime sales due to other reasons.

Well, we shall see.

In its first 10 weeks after launch (aligned), Twilight Princess sold just under 2m copies on the Wii. It eventually sold 6m copies.
So far, in no more than 5 weeks in any region, Skyward Sword has sold just under 2m copies on the Wii.

So while Skyrim may be doing quite well, but it does not appear to be doing so at the expense of Zelda.

Mike from Morgantown

http://img-cache.cdn.gaiaonline.com/e0cb29b8b9060b2858d74c899a875980/http://i334.photobucket.com/albums/m430/TobiasX2k/NotSureIfTroll.jpg

No.. it was Just Dance 3..

I don't think it stole its thunder the same amount of people are going to buy it. Will probably end 6ish million and it got great review scores same as every other console Zelda. I think people expected it to open with 2 million first week but that's just not how Zelda does things. It's not that Skyrim stole anything but what people expected to happen with this entry of Zelda.

to be fair the sales of a launch game are not comparable to those of a game out on a matured console. There is no way skyward sword will be able to hold up as well as twilight princess did for so long, so to match its sales it would need to catch up very quickly as in by the next holidays.

A good example is resistance and resistance 2. Resistance 2's first 10 weeks of sale were significantly higher then resistance 1, and it didn't even get close to matching the original's sales.