Or it means that Breath of the Wild was the primary game and pretty much the only major seller for a solid year, turned out to be one of the most beloved games of all time, and has been out for 7 years now vs 6 months for TOTK. 

There are tonnes of factors to consider, not just hard numbers and install base. 

Unless by some miracle Tears of the Kingdom had no chance of besting Breath of the Wild given one came out at the system's launch and the other in the twilight years. Best case scenario it'd be equal sales in the end. Time is a major factor, ESPECIALLY on Nintendo consoles. 

Perhaps - then again, from what I observed, there are a lot of folks who loved BotW that found TotK to be not as good, and word of mouth was nowhere as strong as with BotW.

If your going to play that game, might wanna check

- LoZ vs LoZ II
- OOT vs MM
- WW vs TP (GCN)
- TP vs SS (Wii)
- LA vs OOS/OOA

would be interesting to see their % differences.

Edit: Also, when the Switch is finally done, the % of BotW vs TotK should be a lot lower than 35%

All I see in your example are better games having better sales (except for WW vs TP (GCN), since it was simultaneously launched on Wii as well).

Phantom Hourglass vs Spirit Tracks.

A Tears Of The Kingdom "Master Works" art book is headed to Japan!

A couple excerpts below:

Source

Word of mouth is indeed nowhere near as strong for TotK. The game is down to 0.33m for the most recent quarter.

Now here is the full list of quarters in which BotW has shipped 0.33m or less. BotW has been out for 29 quarters.

Ending March 2024 - 0.24m

Yes, this list is complete. I double-checked.

Is it possible that BotW will ship more copies than ToTK from this point forward? Yes, because the chances for that to happen aren't that bad.

And even disregarding all that...Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom both are far and away the #1 and #2 best selling Zelda titles of all time. 31 million and 20 million vs #3 at I believe 7.9 Million or something. So even if Tears of the Kingdom is lower than BOTW by a third it's still leagues ahead of the next runner up. 

I do need to check it out. Not actually sure on OOT's numbers but I do know that OOT is #2 and even with OOT3D on top it doesn't come close to either BOTW of TOTK.

**Edit** https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda

Looks like OOT with all versions is 14.04 million. And a shocking #4 was Link's Awakening, majorly due to the Switch port. 

#1 - Breath of the Wild - 33.55 Million

#2 - Tears of the Kingdom - 20.61 Million

#3 - Ocarina of Time - 14.04 Million

#4 - Link's Awakening - 12.68 Million

#5 - Twilight Princess - 10.02 Million

All outstanding games in their own right if I do say so myself. 

Amazon currently has The Legend of Zelda Complete Box Set on sale for $60.71 (43% off). The box set includes all ten volumes of The Legend of Zelda manga, along with a bonus poster.

If anyone already has this set, let us know if it's worth it!

I said that I would not be surprised at all if BotW started to outsell TotK on quarterly basis soon. It looks like it could happen as soon as next quarter. All that TotK really needed to be a “perfect “ sequel was cool dungeons with challenging enemies, but Nintendo could not help themselves and had “to innovate” with stupid “abilities”. What a damn shame!!