AddRat said:
While I agree with your take on the comparison, I think that you are placing the segmented audience of pre-World MH it too much of a focus here when talking about the IP in general. The people who, at least initially, bought World were most likely a largely different audience than the Japanese and handheld-centric most popular MH games up to that point but latter audience needs to accounted anyways since we are talking about IP growth.
PSP titles ended up with quite high numbers, especially for their time, by the last entries with almost 4m million in the case of Unite and almost 5 million for MHP3rd.
Same for the 3DS titles, with 4U and Gen reaching 4.2 and 4.3 respectively. Now, as I said before, World's audience is mostly different people, even by definition, as IIRC, Tri's 1million western sales were the most the series had sold up until then in the west with probably only 4U topping it (or GU). But those sales should be counted into the IPs status at the time.
Still, Worlds sales were explosive, especially taking into account that the cultural relevance of Zelda has been much greater throughout generations and its previous peaks also much higher.
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Wyrdness said:
The argument about competition's core foundation is to push the inference of sales and output from third parties which is simply no longer the case with Switch, the flaw in this argument is that while PC and PS5 have more competition it is simply not as great a gap to the point that it makes first party titles perform the way they do.
I've played MH since the original PS2 release believe me your argument is the one that is misleading, the last console MH game was on a single platform for a start and required the platform holder Nintendo to do all the marketing and publishing themselves outside Japan it wasn't going to release in the west otherwise and to top it off it was only the second console game to come to the west after the original PS2 game. ALTTP, WW, PH, ALBW, LA(OG), Oracles all averaged in at 4m or less and were the first Zelda games on their platform that's five compared to the three exceptions, fact is LOZ, OOT and TP sold what they did because the were factors not tied to the games at play this is why the series didn't stay at those numbers and the rest of the games average 4m for example the first Zelda game which you used in your argument was one of the earliest games in a new era of gaming after the crash, in comparison the first Monster Hunter game had flawed execution as a game with wayward controls with lack of content literally eight or so monsters offline and the rest requiring online to access coupled with the dreadful handling of PS2 online especially outside of Japan doomed it. TOTK will be selling until the next mainline Zelda game much like BOTW (it's been selling steadily for eight years now and still hitting 1m a quarter at 33m) has so in the four or five years until then it'll be selling with the new brand power this is why I doubt Wild will outsell it in the end even if Wild is ported to Switch 2 I can see maybe only a few extra mil at most much like the ports of Rise after NS/PC.
The are many great and influential franchises that doesn't translate into mainstream sales though Metroid is an example of this so it hasn't got as much bearing rating a series growth especially as prestige is something the masses aren't as aware of, your stance is pivoting to the niche argument with MH outside Japan well here is the irony Zelda has been niche in Japan for a while before BOTW even TP the highest selling only shifted 600k over the, Japan is one of the three major regions and games like the Freedom/Portable were at times outselling Zelda titles totals in Japan alone Freedom 3 sol 4.9m in Japan alone had it had a western release even with niche sales it would stand at a total comparable to the top three selling Zelda titles so it effectively balances out.
The growth of both titles is as equally impressive as each other same thing with GOW, Spiderman etc.
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I was trying to explain to Sephiran where the large playerbase on Steam is. You don't simply look at how a particular AAA game performed on Steam and go "OMG why is Zelda better?! Where are all those Steam users?" (paraphrasing). Steam, PS, and Xbox players are far more spread out and this is just the truth.
I didn't want to get into hypotheticals, but had there been a stronger software competition on Switch, there would've been a lot of cannibalization (but also a growth in install base), because people have limited leisure and budgets. When I was a crazy active gamer and owned all 5 platforms in gen 6, I had countless games I wanted to play that I ultimately never could. So you just can't fault or downplay a game for not matching freaking Zelda only because it's available to a very large playerbase. The larger playerbase is countered by fierce software and services competition, and not every game is a Zelda. Monster Hunter keeps growing and that's the only stat that matters.
Elsewhere... Zelda as an IP has always been huge. Its sales fluctuated based on the related home console success/failure, time of release, and according to some "style and quality". An early mainline Zelda consistently did great on successful home consoles, ranked high in sales (among Nintendo's home console games), and were described as generation-defining. Late ones within a generation had less hype and sold considerably less, with Skyward Sword being the absolute worst when install base is accounted for. Zelda's main audience is on home consoles, so spinoffs on handhelds brought the sales average down like how Monster Hunter spinoffs and home console titles brought MH's average down, except there were a fewer home console MH than handheld Zeldas, because home console MH sold poorly and likely cost a lot more than a handheld/spinoff Zelda. Sure, each failure had their "reasons" and I was among the first to detail that in the discussions leading to World's launch. I argued that World had a huge "unknown factor" going for it and therefore hard to predict, that MH was never given a proper chance on home consoles, let alone PC.
No matter, Monster Hunter saw multiple significant growths in the PS2-PSP era (thanks to Japan), and another massive growth from 3DS/Wii to modern systems ("Handheld" line grew like 4x~, home console line grew 15x~ and maybe more with Wilds. Availability to a larger playerbase contributes to this, obviously). Zelda fluctuated a lot in comparison, because it was at the mercy of Nintendo home consoles' sales and was also particularly affected by quality/word of mouth. The fact that Monster Hunter is being compared at all to the two most popular Zelda games ever is an evidence in and of itself that it grew more. MH was insignificant outside Japan. Zelda never was insignificant in any major market.
Monster Hunter is one of those weird titles that were hugely popular in Japan and insignificant in the rest of the world in all relevant metrics (not counting piracy). Regardless of how big Japan is as a market, at the end of the day it's a single isolated country. Zelda's growth in Japan impressed greatly and is the one area where it easily beats recent MH. But the rest of the world outweighs that.
Last edited by Kyuu - on 06 March 2025
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