This might be the dumbest thing I've read all day. 

(Little late in responding to this...) ...but do you think Nintendo is actually seeing 20mil sales in less than a year, and becomes so upset that they change the direction of the franchise? We're talking about a game with seven years of evergreen growth competing against its successor which has only had ten months to grow. 35% drop is extraordinarily impressive, especially noting how monstrously well BotW sales figures are. Good metrics to consider are OoT v MM, SMG1 v SMG2, SMW V SMW2, DKC1 v DKC2, the DS Zeldas, etc., all of which probably saw larger percent drops.

Yeah, I think at least some people up high in Nintendo are wondering whose fault it is that TotK will not sell anywhere near BotW numbers on a much larger user base.

Completely change the formula? No. They don't need to. They just need to fix the broken parts, listen to fans a bit more, and recognize that buzz around TotK was much shorter and quieter than around BotW. AKA, tweak it to be more like original LoZ (which what they initially advertised it as, anyway).

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 in a franchise known for having second entries 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 less than BotW is proof of nothing, it’s just par for the course. I don’t see why anyone would have expected otherwise, neither here nor at Nintendo, because this game has been performing exactly to my personal expectations at least.

EDIT: Fixed terrible grammer and spelling.

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.

If your POV says 'something's not right' with 20M sales in less than a year from a series that traditionally sold less than 10M, then have you considered your POV might be wrong? If you dislike the game and want Nintendo to change direction with the next title, that's fine. But to pretend it isn't a success seems very strange.

Nah, everything is fine with my POV - 20 millions is success compared to pre-BotW titles, not compared to BotW.
BotW successor should've easily surpassed BotW numbers, given the anticipation and user base.

Horrible take. Most people don't care about dungeons. Its why Zelda has never been bigger even with the poor legs ToTK is still far and away bigger than every other Zelda.

/facepalm

"In every Zelda development, the dungeons take a huge amount of time to make. I can't tell you how many times they end up having to be remade and revised, while the team is on the verge of tears. Did you know, in the original Legend of Zelda, at the beginning of the development it was just dungeons. There was no overhead map. That's a testament to the "Dungeon Supremacy" philosophy we've always followed. However, with Ocarina of Time, for the first time we didn't spend as much time on the dungeons. It was a very a "un-Zelda" thing to do. (laughs)"

Shigeru Miyamoto

I'm sure you all saw the news that LEGO will release a 2-in-1 Great Deku Tree set on September 1 for $300. You can pre-order the set here.