3mil+ sales isnt good? They didn't make a profit? If they did even if small then TP made a hell of alot of money

You must be joking or should go back to school to learn them numbers again.

Zelda games aren't expensive to make when compared to other AAA games, even IF they didn't sell well, and they do.

I don't mean they didn't profit.

I mean that 5 years * ~100 of their best people wasn't justified by 3m sales. If invested in 2 full 2.5 year projects of 70 people and a large number of smaller side games, total revenue would have been much higher.

For example, should Valve have made Half-Life 3? No. Because although it would profit, it's single player and one-time purchase so cannot provide the ongoing revenue that the same investment in TF2 and Dota 2 over the period did.

They are Nintendo's most expensive game to make though. And they're not remotely Nintendo's highest selling game. Therefore their priorities are wrong.

Eiji Aonuma and his vision for the future of Zelda http://kotaku.com/if-nintendo-made-a-legend-of-zelda-film-itd-change-w-1445606313

Zelda will never be Nintendo's highest selling game. That has nothing to do with how "dark" it is. It's a geeky game for geeky people. As long as it's a single player game about an elf boy with a sword in tights, it will never sell as well as Mario Kart or Pokemon. Their priorities are fine.

It doesn't matter if it's Nintendo's most expensive game to make if it still inexpensive and it is still lucrative. "5 years * ~100 of their best people" wouldn't be justified on a typical AAA 7th gen budget, but for the budget of a game like Skyward Sword, it's fine.

And frankly, Nintendo makes so much money off cheap to make games like Mario Kart and NSMB that it can afford to take monetary liberties on lesser selling franchises.

I ignored nothing. I'm not asserting that NSMB U is a bad game. I'm asserting that it's not moving hardware in the way that NSMB Wii did, and the reason for that is that people who wanted that sort of game could have bought NSMB Wii with a Wii for a lot less money.

I take great issue with people who go "clearly the problem is with the Wii U hardware" - there's nothing wrong with the Wii U hardware. It functions exactly as you would expect, and is to the 8th generation what the Wii was to the 7th generation - lowest in power by a noticeable amount, but makes up for it with new ideas that weren't present in the previous generation, while its competitors continue with bumping the poly count and shader effects and don't do much else to change things up (unless you count anti-consumer actions like ramping up microtransactions, blocking used gaming, etc).

The Wii U has its problems, but Wii U sales aren't because of the hardware. With the right game, the system will sell hugely well. Wii was sold out for 2 years primarily because of one game - Wii Sports. It wasn't just a system-seller, it was a system-definer. Wii U has not had such a title, yet. I don't doubt that NSMB U will end up selling a huge number of copies in the long run... but people are not going out to gaming stores to buy Wii U in order to play that game. They went out and bought Wii for NSMB Wii, just as they went out and bought Wii for Wii Sports.

NSMB U is a great game. But if you want four player NSMB gameplay, you can get that for a lot less with a Wii. It won't sell the Wii U. 3D World will do better, although I expect it to primarily work during Christmas itself, rather than at launch, because there hasn't been a Mario title like it before (of course, it's still 3D Mario, so it won't do as well as NSMB Wii did). And the "NSMB U was at launch, and has a high attach rate" is completely irrelevant. Like I said, NSMB Wii made people go out and buy a Wii for THAT ONE GAME ALONE. NSMB U isn't able to do that. Which is no slight on the game itself. Few went out to buy a Wii for Mario Galaxy, and it sold well over 10 million copies, and was one of the greatest games of all time.

And to bring that back to the issue of Zelda... the exact same thing would apply with regards to a new Zelda, if it were too much like an old Zelda. It needs to be fresh and different in order to really be the sort of system-seller Nintendo needs it to be... and to be remembered fondly 5 years after release. Compare attitudes towards Wind Waker, Majora's Mask, and Twilight Princess. The most Ocarina-like of these was Twilight Princess... and while quite popular initially, it wore off quickly, and most people place it below WW, MM, OoT, and often Skyward Sword, too. Majora's Mask, which broke a lot of the traditions of Zelda, and threw all sorts of new things into the mix, is now called for as the game for Nintendo to remake - and when people talk about the style they'd like it in, they all point to Wind Waker's graphics - which were initially lambasted.

Twilight Princess sold so well because it was the Wii's premier launch "core" game. This gave it the sort of momentum it needed to get it into lots of homes. Zelda U won't have that benefit, as it will release likely 3 years after system launch (I'm expecting November 2015). It needs to be a fresh game, with its own feel and nuances. Note that I don't mention gimmicks - that's because I'm not saying it needs a new gimmick. It needs to feel like its own game, and not a paint-by-numbers imitation. If reviewers would start with "It's like a new Ocarina of Time quest, but in HD", then it has failed.

Yeah, it's selling like crazy - 50k a week in late November. Compared with NSMB Wii, which was selling 400k a week in late November 2010, a year after it released. And don't waste my time with "but Install Base!", because install base is a measure of people who buy a system for a game, and there aren't many games for the Wii U that people would buy the system for - NSMB U is one of the best available at this time. So many of those who *do* buy a Wii U are getting that game for it. But it's not a game that is inspiring millions upon millions of people to buy a Wii U. If the Wii U had a true system-seller, NSMB U would not have nearly as big a percentage of the install base.

I didn't say the game was bad, and I said the game was rejected by comparison with NSMB Wii. Of the 26 million people who bought NSMB Wii, maybe 2 million (assuming there are some who bought NSMB U but never had NSMB Wii) have decided that they need to buy a Wii U to play its successor. And given relative sales of Nintendo Land (and the fact that Nintendo found much higher demand for the Premium bundle), I'm guessing that that game is contributing just as much to people's decisions to buy a Wii U.

So Nintendo are a charity to keep up what the hardcore want it to make using casual money?

What they should have made with that money is Wii Sports 2, NSMB Wii 2 and Wii Relax/Vitality Sensor.