Announced yesterday, already doomed. I'm surprised there wasn't a DOOOM thread even earlier than that.

Something like, "Nintendo will probably announce a game at tomorrow's Direct, and we have no clue what it's going to be, but can we all at least agree that it's DOOMED??"

This guy gets it.

It better not flop. Farming out spin offs of top franchises or smaller franchises to third parties is a great idea and is Nintendo's only hope to remain relevant with other developers.

Its ok not to like every single game in existance.

I dont share the opinion though. I love the Dynasty Warriors series, especially the lastest one. But they are polarising games. You either love them or you hate them, but i see alot of arrogance from people who say the game is bad. The game is fun, especially on co-op. A fun game just cant be a bad game.

The game will no doubt be a sucess in Japan though.

It's doomed, I mean what were they thinking? Dynasty Warriors is a popular series in Japan and Link hasnt done well there as of lately, then Zelda is quite popular here but Dynasty Warriors isnt, so I guess they hope that both series combined can help each other, LMAO what a dumb idea, seriously, I mean Did Marvel and Capcom find sucess by mixing their characters? did Link make Soul Calibur 2 the most sold verion of that game even when XBOX and PS2 had a bigger fanbase? did Lego make money by brining Star Wars characters and DC Characters to their games?
Yeah, Bad idea.

How about Nintendo gets a "friendly" third party studio? Koei might not be Rockstar, but it's something. Aaaand knowing the popularity of Dynasty Warriors in Japan... and that it's Link... and a Wii U... obviously they want to appeal to the rather tiny home console audience in Japan. Can't go wrong. I'm sure there will be a lot of N control over this game, they won't just let screw up this game. They know that Zelda is their SAVIOUR from DUUMMD?! . Yhe can't let anybody hurt this franchise.

It will sell more than you'd expect and less than you'd hope.

Not any more it isn't. the franchise peaked all the way back in 2003 with DW4 which sold 1.13m in Japan and it has never matched this performance. DW5 and DW6 showed declines (0.91m and 0.41m) and although DW7 did better as it was a return to form after 6 which was not as well-liked by some fans, it still did only 0.46m. DW8 was also disappointing saleswise, it's currently sitting at just 0.33m and this unlikely to significantly improve on this due to musou games traditionally lacking in the legs department.

Not only had the series been in decline, it's also seriously oversaturated. This year alone there have been 6 musou games in Japan - One Piece Musou 2, DW8, Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate, DW8 Xtreme Legends, Samurai Warriors 2 HD and Shin Gundam Musou

Another thing is that though it does get released from time to time on different platforms, it is a series which is heavily associated with Sony platforms - that's where the musou fans are. The only WiiU musou game there's been is Warriors Orochi 3 Hyper which tanked - in Japan it sold just 20k, WW it did 50k compared to WO3U on PS3 (another late enhanced version of the game) which did over 100k in just 2 weeks in Japan alone

The decline in the west has been even more drastic - outside of Japan the combined sales of DW4 on PS2 and Xbox were 1.13m. For DW8, it's 0.19m. As for saying that the two fanbases will both buy it, the musou fanbase is shrinking, is highly unlikely to own a WiiU because the series is almost always on Sony platforms and because of all the other musou games that they can get on PS3 they are unlikely to buy one just to play a single musou game.

As for the Zelda fans, this is ultimately likely to be a musou game with a Zelda skin, it is very unlike a Zelda game - though they're both 3rd person action games, one places a far greater emphasis on puzzle solving an exploration, the other is a mindless, balls-out button-masher of a hack and slash (long may it continue!). I don't think zelda fans are particularly going to like it. The Zelda IP of course means it will do better than just another musou game but outside of people who buy it purely because it says Zelda on the packet, I doubt all that many copies will be sold - wrong genre for the console, doesn't make any sense why you'd mash the two together

Businesswise it's still a sensible move because it's a cheap and quick solution to the WiiU's primary problem which is a percieved lacked of compelling exclusive content - this will not need to sell that many copies to make a profit, that's why even with the declines, Tecmo-Koei still bother making them. It is not going to set the sales charts on fire, particularly as Zelda isn't that big in Japan and as the figures show, musou is very niche in the west

EDIT: Had my figures for outside Japan wrong, it's actually even worse

I would say it can do 4-500k max. As a person who has owned nearly every Zelda game(Never got ages/seasons), I will not purchase this when I get a U.

For your sake and the sake of the universe, I hope you're right.