Zelda BotW becomes the best-selling Zelda game ever, 8.48m on Switch, ~10m in total

[Deleted member 249]

I did some math now and removed all scores below 5 from average(supposing it's an arithmetic average) to see the effect of review bomb and the result I got was ~85,9. Not saying that MC user score is a representation of the whole market(because it isn't). My point is that people who didn't like the game(I am not included despite my amount of criticism) needs to see some changes to be interested in the next entry. That's why I believe they will drink in the old formula fountain and merge with the great achievements that Breath of the Wild brought.

Some personal anecdote. I live in Brazil where videogame console are very expensive even though the power of Switch and BOTW word of mouth made a lot of people from my job to buy them. As I'm an avid Zelda fan and my coworkers know about that, a lot of them talked to me about their experience with BOTW(usually their first Zelda) and a good amount of them dropped the game without finishing.
I alway wondered, for example, if the people that disliked Twilight Princess(hyped launch game of a hyped console) contributed for the weak sales of Skyward Sword(though there's are other reasons already discussed in this one).

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Speaking specifically to your anecdote, most people do not finish most games they play. Even on enthusiast communities like this one, the completion rate for games is shockingly low.
With that said, there is a second point to consider, which is selection bias- Metacritic is a recent phenomenon. It didn't exist back in the N64 days, and its prominence in the Gamecube days was limited. The only people who would bother to try and find an old game to leave a user review or score on it are people who enjoyed it, which leads to self selection bias and score inflation.
I agree with your larger point- BotW is amazing, it is not perfect, and it could stand to be improved in several ways. No arguments there. However, I disagree with the examples you have used to illustrate your point so far.

 

[ArchedThunder]

My game of the year, greatly deserved.
Now get some traditional dungeons in there and have multiple different aesthetics for shrines and we have the perfect Zelda game.

 

[mael]

Twilight Princess didn't have bad WoM, it would never have reached its sales high otherwise.
It sold something like 1.5M in its 1st month in the US.
If WoM would have killed it wouldn't have beaten OoT's original release.
Skyward Sword is entirely on being a disappointing game and Nintendo dropping the Wii like a rock post 2010

 

[srtrestre]

Game has had great legs as well. It's not over yet.

 

[Tito]

Dungeons are only part of it though. The zelda formula since SNES has been something like (*):
FIND DUNGEON/ENTRANCE, OPEN WITH ITEM FROM PREVIOUS DUNGEON > FIND SPECIAL ITEM > BEAT DUNGEONPUZZLES WITH ITEM > FIGHT PUZZLEBOSS WITH ITEM

BOTW goes back to the open world design of zelda 1 where you could enter dungeon five from ~the start of the game.

(*) add (PLAY 2-4 HOUR TUTORIAL) since OOT

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LTTP wasn't like this though, this started with Links Awakening. Items in LTTP where not crucial in dungeons, nor as tied to dungeons as in future games.

OOT tutorial was 40 min max. It was completely stupid in SS.

 

[Vadara]

Maybe, but we'll never see a game like Ocarina of Time or Twilight Princess again in the main series.



Because of the obsession of "open world" games. Hardly anyone cares about traditional Zelda anymore.

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Good. The old formula was overrated anyway.

 

[Nothing Loud]

IMO For the next Zelda, they need to do some kind of item rental system or something like for ALBW so that items can have meaning in puzzle solving and so that everything isn't just immediately solved with a boring rune. Dungeons in general should have effort put into them. The 4 guardians were an embarrassingly short and generic.

Also the master sword should be unlimited use

But other than that, keep 98% of the BOTW formula and make a sequel :)

 

[chrisypoo]

As someone who purchased it on both the Wii U and the Switch, it deserves it; the game single handedly revived my love for Zelda.

 

[Instro]

IMO For the next Zelda, they need to do some kind of item rental system or something like for ALBW so that items can have meaning in puzzle solving and so that everything isn't just immediately solved with a boring rune.

Also the master sword should be unlimited use

But other than that, keep 98% of the BOTW formula and make a sequel :)

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I hated the rental shop personally. Just make it so that the necessary items have to be found through the overworld. They could also take the Zelda 1 approach and make it so you can attempt some dungeons in any order, while others can only be done after completing one or more of the others. Or some combo of both ideas. I think most folks would like that, and it would really reward exploration, while also allowing them to fill the game with different styles of dungeons.

 

[Rave_norris]

Also bought it on the wii u. Played for 150 hours. Then bought a switch. Then needed to buy the game again. And the DLC. GOTG.

 

[Nothing Loud]

I hated the rental shop personally. Just make it so that the necessary items have to be found through the overworld. They could also take the Zelda 1 approach and make it so you can attempt some dungeons in any order, while others can only be done after completing one or more of the others. Or some combo of both ideas. I think most folks would like that, and it would really reward exploration, while also allowing them to fill the game with different styles of dungeons.

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That could work. Using something like runes as tools to solve mini dungeons to access hidden items in the over world to go solve real dungeons.

 

[Malcolm9]

Good. The old formula was overrated anyway.

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Serious post?

Zelda has been an amazing series, it's hardly overrated, maybe overused in regards to the gameplay aspects. BOTW was a fresh take but it doesn't have the Zelda "magic" for me.

The next game should mix the old and the new to be truly great. Oh and remove the awful weapon degradation as well.

 

[mael]

That could work. Using something like runes as tools to solve mini dungeons to access hidden items in the over world to go solve real dungeons.

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They can keep the structure they have even with the old item system.
As long as the items are not mandatory but makes things A LOT easier to the point of making the thing trivial it shoudl be incentive enough to want to get the new items.
Kinda like how in TP, some enemies were vastly easier with the hookshot but you could still dispatch them without it.
That way you can still advance without the items, it's just incredibly harder without them.

Serious post?

Zelda has been an amazing series, it's hardly overrated, maybe overused in regards to the gameplay aspects. BOTW was a fresh take but it doesn't have the Zelda 'magic for me.

The next game should mix the old and the new to be truly great.

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Nah the market has spoken, going to the old romp would be a massive step back.
Restricting progresion to items would make the game a bore to play and replay again and it never made much sense anyway.

 

[Oddish1]

Skyward Sword is entirely on being a disappointing game and Nintendo dropping the Wii like a rock post 2010

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Skyward Sword was released one year before the Wii U was released and required Wii Motion plus to play. Majora's Mask sold comparable to it in similar circumstances. While Majora's Mask and Skyward Sword are on the lower end of 3D Zelda sales they both still sold well and both received very high critical reception. The idea that Skyward Sword had a huge negative word of mouth that hurt its sales or that it was sign of the franchise's decline is straight up nonsense with nothing to back it up.

 

[Common Knowledge]

I totally get and agree with wanting large-scale dungeons to make a return, and I think they most definitely will. What is likely not going to return are "lock and key" style puzzles and items that function merely as contextual keys in set parts of the environment. And to that I say good riddance. I just can't go back to that after the more open-ended physics-based puzzle solving of BotW.

 

[Deleted member 3017]

There will be "old" Zelda games again. Odyssey has proven Nintendo is fine revisiting old ideas with fresh eyes.

Y'all might have to wait a decade or more, but Nintendo will make a "classic style" 3D Zelda again.

And future "open air" Zelda entries will likely incorporate some classic elements anyway.

 

[Common Knowledge]

Skyward Sword was released one year before the Wii U was released and required Wii Motion plus to play. Majora's Mask sold comparable to it in similar circumstances. While Majora's Mask and Skyward Sword are on the lower end of 3D Zelda sales they both still sold well and both received very high critical reception. The idea that Skyward Sword had a huge negative word of mouth that hurt its sales or that it was sign of the franchise's decline is straight up nonsense with nothing to back it up.

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Except Aonuna himself has stated that SS's criticisms played a direct part in designing BotW.

 

[SharpX68K]

Even over Ocarina Of Time?!?

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Twilight Princess sold more than Ocarina Of Time, and now Breath Of The Wild has sold more than Twilight Princess.

 

[Mass Effect]

Maybe, but we'll never see a game like Ocarina of Time or Twilight Princess again in the main series.

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That's what people said about Mario 64 before we knew about Odyssey.

Hell, that's what people said about 2D Mario games before NSMB.

 

[Oddish1]

Except Aonuna himself has stated that SS's criticisms played a direct part in designing BotW.

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So? Windwaker's criticisms played a direct role in Twilight Princess' development, and Twilight Princess' criticisms played a direct role in designing Skyward Sword. I have no doubt that criticism for BotW will play a part in designing the next Zelda game.

 

[Deleted member 15538]

Having this in your backlog (did finish the plateau) for almost a year feels great. This generation is just crazy.

 

[zoukka]

Skyward Sword was released one year before the Wii U was released and required Wii Motion plus to play. Majora's Mask sold comparable to it in similar circumstances. While Majora's Mask and Skyward Sword are on the lower end of 3D Zelda sales they both still sold well and both received very high critical reception. The idea that Skyward Sword had a huge negative word of mouth that hurt its sales or that it was sign of the franchise's decline is straight up nonsense with nothing to back it up.

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There was a big backlash among HC gamers (which doesn't mean that your average joe gave a shit) about the constant handholding and interruptions from the "fairy" in SS. It was clearly the culmination of Nintendo's problems back then when they dumbed down their franchises and insufferable tutorials and info popups everywhere. Glad we are past those dark days.

 

[Phendrift]

You all are kidding yourselves if you think we'll see another 3D Zelda that plays like OoT-SS.

It's not going to happen. To go back from the sheer amount of interactivity, gameplay possibilities and just content in general that BotW offers would be an objectively HUGE downgrade that Nintendo will never make, especially because they worked so hard on it and it was recieved insanely well.

If anything, we'll just get more items and bigger dungeons in the BotW formula. We're not going back to OoT.

 

[Damian Mahadevan]

LTTP wasn't like this though, this started with Links Awakening. Items in LTTP where not crucial in dungeons, nor as tied to dungeons as in future games.

OOT tutorial was 40 min max. It was completely stupid in SS.

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That is where it started though. There is no way to beat a certain boss without using a hookshot. You needed to use a hammer or bomb for another boss.

 

[Regulus Tera]

Do those numbers include re-releases? I could have sworn Ocarina had already passed 10 million once you added the 3DS port.

Incredible, regardless. I have a feeling Nintendo is going through a third Golden Age at the moment.

 

[Deleted member 249]

You all are kidding yourselves if you think we'll see another 3D Zelda that plays like OoT-SS.

It's not going to happen. To go back from the sheer amount of interactivity, gameplay possibilities and just content in general that BotW offers would be an objectively HUGE downgrade that Nintendo will never make, especially because they worked so hard on it and it was recieved insanely well.

If anything, we'll just get more items and bigger dungeons in the BotW formula. We're not going back to OoT.

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Yeah. BotW is the new template. The most we will see is slightly more linear sections and dungeons, but that's about it.

 

[night814]

Speaking specifically to your anecdote, most people do not finish most games they play. Even on enthusiast communities like this one, the completion rate for games is shockingly low.
With that said, there is a second point to consider, which is selection bias- Metacritic is a recent phenomenon. It didn't exist back in the N64 days, and its prominence in the Gamecube days was limited. The only people who would bother to try and find an old game to leave a user review or score on it are people who enjoyed it, which leads to self selection bias and score inflation.
I agree with your larger point- BotW is amazing, it is not perfect, and it could stand to be improved in several ways. No arguments there. However, I disagree with the examples you have used to illustrate your point so far.

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You can just look at PS4 trophy lists and see what percentage of people actually get the "end game" trophy. Stuff like p5 when I beat it last summer was something like 30%, that's pretty low considering how popular the game was. Even Horizon which you could beat in 40 hours without much hassle had sub-50% if I remember correctly (someone could check I'm on mobile).

This doesn't work for Zelda so much but for BotW you could check your friends lists BotW playtime and make a pretty good assumption that if they did 30-40 hours it's possible they completed it. That would at least be enough to say they liked it to a point, under 20 they gave a good effort and under 10 they probably really disliked it or moved onto something else quickly.

 

[chainlinkspiral]

The Breath of the Wild team are all pretty gushing about the game, really proud of it, and hint they'd like to explore and iterate more on it, and it's a huge commercial success, so I don't think Breath of the Wild style Zelda is going anyplace short term. I do expect them to Majora's Mask it, to some extent, with the follow-up.

 

[mael]

Skyward Sword was released one year before the Wii U was released and required Wii Motion plus to play. Majora's Mask sold comparable to it in similar circumstances. While Majora's Mask and Skyward Sword are on the lower end of 3D Zelda sales they both still sold well and both received very high critical reception. The idea that Skyward Sword had a huge negative word of mouth that hurt its sales or that it was sign of the franchise's decline is straight up nonsense with nothing to back it up.

Click to shrink...

Majora's Mask was requiring a peripheral that you had to buy seperately.
Skyward Sword was bundled with its required peripheral.
the idea that somehow there was something to limit SS's reach is all kinds of nonsense.

On top of that, Majora's Mask was pretty clear in what it was : a quirky spinoff that reused a lot of stuffs
Skyward Sword on the other hand was the flagship title that they talked about FOR YEARS.
MM was released in 2000, 2 years after OoT.

Skyward Sword was released in 2011 some 5 years after its predecessor!
They hyped it for more years than they worked on MM!
There's absolutely no way SS performed to anyone's expectation

 

[Oddish1]

There was a big backlash among HC gamers (which doesn't mean that your average joe gave a shit) about the constant handholding and interruptions from the "fairy" in SS. It was clearly the culmination of Nintendo's problems back then when they dumbed down their franchises and insufferable tutorials and info popups everywhere. Glad we are past those dark days.

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Sure, and there were people bitter over the game's focus on motion controls. But there's no reason to think that had much impact on its sales compared to the circumstances it launched in.

 

[maximumzero]

Zelda is mainstream, about time.

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...man, what.

 

[Deleted member 249]

You can just look at PS4 trophy lists and see what percentage of people actually get the "end game" trophy. Stuff like p5 when I beat it last summer was something like 30%, that's pretty low considering how popular the game was. Even Horizon which you could beat in 40 hours without much hassle had sub-50% if I remember correctly (someone could check I'm on mobile).

This doesn't work for Zelda so much but for BotW you could check your friends lists BotW playtime and make a pretty good assumption that if they did 30-40 hours it's possible they completed it. That would at least be enough to say they liked it to a point, under 20 they gave a good effort and under 10 they probably really disliked it or moved onto something else quickly.

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To be honest, even play count isn't a good indicator, lol. I have friends (including a co-worker I was just talking to, co-incidentally) who have over 50 hours in the game and still haven't completed it.

 

[zoukka]

Sure, and there were people bitter over the game's focus on motion controls. But there's no reason to think that had much impact on its sales compared to the circumstances it launched in.

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Part of BotW's and Odyssey's success has to be the incredible hype among HC gamers when we realized Nintendo is going back to their roots. I can imagine SS suffered in inverse as people realized how rigid it was. And even if the sales weren't that bad, the directors listen to fan feedback to a degree.

 

[night814]

To be honest, even play count isn't a good indicator, lol. I have friends (including a co-worker I was just talking to, co-incidentally) who have over 50 hours in the game and still haven't completed it.

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While true that's certainly enough time to formulate a solid opinion on the game positive or negative.

 

[skullwaker]

Nintendo couldn't have asked for a better result. And it's entirely deserved, too.

BotW is the first game in the series to reach the 10m marker. And it'll be the first game in the series to sell 10m on a single platform as well, since the Switch version will surely get there by the end of the year (probably within the next two quarters even).

Has another series ever peaked 30 years after its inception? Lmao.

 

[Deleted member 7462]

I'm hoping that, with the success of BotW and also Odyssey, Nintendo moves toward a more strict line between their 2D and 3D offerings within the same series.

2D Mario can be linear, 3D Mario can be open-course playground.

2D Zelda can be more "get tool, unlock area, use tool for dungeon puzzles," 3D Zelda can be open-world.

Part of my frustration with Mario since the Wii has been getting linear game after linear game after linear game across all Mario platformers.

And honestly, the only way that I'm really interested in Zelda moving forward is in the Zelda games that are open-world. They made a good game with some flaws, but their next iteration should be very good and a "best open-world game ever" contender, at least. That's what I'm expecting now that they got a baseline for this type of game down in BotW.

 

[Deleted member 249]

While true that's certainly enough time to formulate a solid opinion on the game positive or negative.

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Oh yeah, absolutely. I was just talking about how even people who love the game don't necessarily finish it.

 

[OuterLimits]

I assume this will continue selling over the lifespan of the Switch. It's final sales will likely greatly surpass every other game in the series.

Kind of curious what will end up being the Switch best selling game. Pokemon, or a 2D Mario game perhaps?

 

[Oddish1]

Majora's Mask was requiring a peripheral that you had to buy seperately.
Skyward Sword was bundled with its required peripheral.
the idea that somehow there was something to limit SS's reach is all kinds of nonsense.

On top of that, Majora's Mask was pretty clear in what it was : a quirky spinoff that reused a lot of stuffs
Skyward Sword on the other hand was the flagship title that they talked about FOR YEARS.
MM was released in 2000, 2 years after OoT.

Skyward Sword was released in 2011 some 5 years after its predecessor!
They hyped it for more years than they worked on MM!
There's absolutely no way SS performed to anyone's expectation

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The bundle that was an extra ten dollars and IIRC had limited availability. Sure, you go ahead and believe that it wasn't a limit.

That's some pretty hardcore revisionism on Majora's Mask. It was always a sequel to Ocarina of Time.

And I don't see how that timeframe is in any way relevant. You could rationalize a longer timeframe as being detrimental since it means people might start losing interest in the series. That's a pretty meaningless stat to pull out.

Part of BotW's and Odyssey's success has to be the incredible hype among HC gamers when we realized Nintendo is going back to their roots. I can imagine SS suffered in inverse as people realized how rigid it was. And even if the sales weren't that bad, the directors listen to fan feedback to a degree.

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Let be be finale of seem. You can imagine it so, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's true. And the directors listen to fan feedback regardless of the success of the previous entry or not. Twilight Princess was the previous best selling Zelda game but the designers still took feedback from it in making new games.

 

[KrigareN-]

Well deserved!

Have put in North of 110 hours on it, which is rare for me to invest on a single player experience.

Which reminds me, I need to go back and finish the game!

 

[Deleted member 249]

I assume this will continue selling over the lifespan of the Switch. It's final sales will likely greatly surpass every other game in the series.

Kind of curious what will end up being the Switch best selling game. Pokemon, or a 2D Mario game perhaps?

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Pokemon or Mario Kart

 

[DecoReturns]

Nintendo couldn't have asked for a better result. And it's entirely deserved, too.

BotW is the first game in the series to reach the 10m marker. And it'll be the first game in the series to sell 10m on a single platform as well, since the Switch version will surely get there by the end of the year (probably within the next two quarters even).

Has another series ever peaked 30 years after its inception? Lmao.

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Fire Emblem lol

 

[twothunder]

some amazing numbers. already looking forward to a future zelda where they build on botw even further

 

[Bear]

Majora's Mask stay losing.

 

[Deleted member 18161]

Truly one of the greatest games ever made. Fully deserves every single sale and hopefully many more to come.

 

[Replicant]

Still criminally undersold. Zelda should be selling close to Mario.

 

[LightEntite]

Majora's Mask stay losing.

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this is one of the most confusing comments

 

[skullwaker]

Fire Emblem lol

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Technically Fire Emblem hasn't been around that long yet (created in 1990) but that's close lol.

How does Nintendo keep doing this?

 

[Deleted member 249]

Technically Fire Emblem hasn't been around that long yet (created in 1990) but that's close lol.

How does Nintendo keep doing this?

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They understand how to cultivate IP like literally no one else.

 

[skullwaker]

They understand how to cultivate IP like literally no one else.

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True. I honestly can't think of a company that manages their IP better than Ninty.

Sure, there are bumps along the way with most of them, but it's insane how old some of their IP are yet they continue to break sales records and innovate with each entry.