Ljink96 said:
The only thing Horizon will have over Zelda will be graphics and even that's a stylistic choice to be had. I feel that Zelda: Breath of the Wild will be 2017's Ocarina of Time, and that's something I didn't believe would happen when Eiji Aonuma claimed it himself but after seeing the breadth of the game, it's going to be unlike any Zelda game ever made. I bring that up because Ocarina of Time is still the best rated game of all time on Metacritic and I expect this to be at least a 96.
Nintendo has proven themselves with Zelda. The game will be highly reviewed. As for Horizon, this is coming from a company that has yet to prove itself and treads heavily on the Zelda principles and design aspects laid out before it. What I've seen from Horizon is a very linear experience with no conversation to be had after 100 people have played it. Unlike Breath of the Wild, everybody, more or less, had the same experience with the demo. To me, that's not very exciting.
Sales, since BotW is coming out on Wii U and NX, BotW might just pull ahead. The last Zelda game to have a dual release was Twilight Princess and it sold about 9 million units. Seeing that Horizon is PS4 exclusive, and not many exclusives get past 6 million... it would be a pretty bold statement to claim that Horizon, from a company that isn't well proven(outside the Killzone series), will outsell a game like say... Uncharted 4 which has only sold about 4-5 million units including digital. And uncharted 4 was hyped as hell, and rightfully so, it's an amazing game.
I haven't seen much in terms of marketing for Horizon. And Zelda, well, marketing for that is literally non existent but that's been true for almost every Zelda game. They'll have commercials around the time of release. So for me, Zelda BotW will at least sell 5 million units across NX and Wii U. Horizon being a new IP from an unproven company, I say 4 million at best. And if Youtube numbers are anything to go by, which most of the time they aren't, Zelda Breath of the Wild stands at 8,431,749 views with 5x the likes that Horizon has and Horizon Zero Dawn stands at 2,087,806 views with a 1 day head start over Zelda.
As for sales in terms of install base, yes, Horizon does benefit from having an install base 3-4x the size of the Wii U. But Nintendo's 1st party content sells really well on Wii U with Mario Kart 8 quickly approaching 8 million units. So if it was Wii U Zelda vs. PS4 Horizon, I'd say it'd be a close match with Horizon pulling ahead.
I've given my 2 cents. I'm going to end up playing both games to get a more concrete feel. I probably wont' be able to play them both as Horizon is set for February and Zelda probably march, and I'll be in full force an uni. But I'll get around to it. Horizon is a beautiful game, Zelda is a beautiful game. But I am going to root for Zelda because well...look at my currently playing list...I've been hit by the Zelda bug but that doesn't mean I can't give another game a chance and find what good it does have.
PS: Let's be more fair with Zelda's new clearer gifs:
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