Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

For a quick laugh, take a look at this ''Zelda Wii U [NEWS]'' article.

http://www.kpopstarz.com/articles/127444/20141023/zelda-wii-u...

This is what you get when journalists have absolutely no idea what they are talking about.

@SpookyMeths So by that logic, Wind Waker HD's sales will be better than Zelda U's sales.

There are multiple reasons why the first console Zelda game has outsold the second one every single time. Undoubtedly because it's the first Zelda game, and more gamers than just the general Zelda fanbase want to get the ''first Zelda'' game. And although it's true that there are more consoles around by the time the second Zelda releases, there are also a lot more games to compete with. Plus there's the fact that MM required the expansion pack, and SS required Motion Plus.

I think that the Wind Waker vs Twilight Princess is an unfair comparison. Twilight Princess was originally released as a Wii launch game. I'd imagine only a select few people who bought the Wii version, also went back to get the GameCube version weeks later. Ergo, if the Wii version didn't exist, I'm sure the numbers for its GameCube sales would've been a little higher.

Perfect Dark essentially mandated the expansion pack. There wasn't a heck of a lot that you could do without it.

You're talking about Wiimotion plus - a "peripheral" that more or less became standard soon after it was introduced. By late 2011 I couldn't even find regular plusless Wiimotes anymore. I doubt that would've been a huge issue.

By the time Motion Plus was introduced, a big part of the casual audience had their Wiis set up as a dust collector. I doubt many of them would go through the trouble of getting another Wii Remote just to play another game. I don't think it made a huge difference, but as I said before, it's the combination of multiple causes that has led to the lesser sales of SS.

The 32m+ sales of Wii Sports Resort says otherwise.

As I said; ''I don't think it made a huge difference, it's the combination of multiple causes that has led to the lesser sales of SS.''

You said one of the causes was that people didn't want to go through the trouble of getting another remote just to play another game, except by the time SS was relevant they already did in droves. Anyone that had Wii Sports Resort could play Skyward Sword.

I think the "real" Zelda fanbase, meaning people who would buy a new Zelda game even if gets panned by critics or gets zero advertising, is rather small - probably around 3 million users? Skyward Sword performed incredibly well considering most of the people forgot about Wii or already gave away their system by the time the game was released (4 million copies for a very late release is not bad at all).

I believe most of modern gamers know about Zelda and know it's a very good serie but haven't played it. That's why, with every generation, the first Zelda sells a lot to newcomers who are curious. The interest of course dies out in the five years between one release and the other. I have a couple of friends who started playing Zelda with the release of Twilight Princess, because it was the "new game you know you have to have". They both really liked it but probably not to the point of buying Skyward Sword on release - one of them sold his Wii in the meantime. The other couldn't accept that you have to kill all the enemies in one room to unlock the doors or make a chest appear. We take for granted that everybody wants and likes Zelda, so if one episode doesn't sell it's because of the quality or the peripheral, but this is not true. The timing is much more important.

That begs the question why this timing doesn't really effect other series like Halo, Mario, or the elder scrolls.

well of course there are a number of franchises that don't need the "new console hype" to sell and can generate a hype of their own. GTA comes to mind, whose sales keep getting better and better with each installment. When GTAV came out, it was advertised as the game that puts an end to all games and the audience perceived it as the top technology could offer and light years ahead of GTAIV (even though they are on the same platform!). I remember seeing ads on buses and trains, and I'm from Rome - not NYC or Tokyo, so we've never seen that kind of stuff for a videogame over here.

On the other hand, the audience sees every first Zelda as the best Nintendo has to offer (attractive), while every second Zelda for each console has been advertised as "more of the same, with improvements" - not exactly enough to attract the people outside the fanbase.

@spizzamarozzi Which is rather humorous if you think about it. Compare OoT to MM. Compare TP to SS. As it goes, the second game always changes things up on a large scale for better or for the worst.

Mario Galaxy outsold Galaxy 2 by almost 4 million copies. The Elder Scrolls and Halo are both multiplat games, perhaps that might influence their sales somehow as well?

[edit]: I just checked to see how other exclusive [Nintendo] games fare in comparison to each other:

Metroid Prime sold more copies than Metroid Prime 2.
Prime 3 outsold Other M.
Pikmin outsold Pikmin 2, both the original NGC version and the New Play Control! version.
Epic Yarn, again, sold more copies than Return to Dreamland.
DKC > DKC2 > DKC3.
Pokémon Stadium > Pokémon Stadium 2.
Pokémon Colosseum > Pokémon XD.
Mario Party > Mario Party 2 > Mario Party 3.
Mario Party 4 > MP5 > MP6 > MP7.
Mario Party 8 > MP9.

It seems to be inevitable among Nintendo games.

Legend of Zelda U and a good Metriod game for Wii U are the same 2 games I keep hearing Xbox and Sony only users demand for Wii U. Zelda U is making interest grow in the Wii U and Metriod will hopefully be at E3 2015

Halo isn't Multiplatform.

OoT changed just as much as MM.

There's a ton of examples of games that have outsold their predecessor on the same console, and just as much games that have sold less, so it's kinda pointless to follow this route. To me, it all comes down to desiderability. Whenever Nintendo releases a new console, the new Zelda is THE game to have - everybody knows that, even people who have never played TLoZ. I know a number of (at the time) newcomers who have started with OoT and a number who have started with TP because...it's natural: they were released at the peak of the consoles lifespan and generated the most interest because they used new technologies. I don't know many people whose first game was MM or SS (although they must exist somewhere). The two follow-ups that matter (MM & SS) were released very late in the console lifespan and they were just "the new Zelda" rather than "THE NEW ZELDA ON THE NEW SYSTEM WITH NEW TECHNOLOGY AND THE NEW CONTROLLER".

Add to that that maybe TLoZ can be a bit unforgiving for newcomers because some of its conventions are almost 30 years old now, so maybe a number of people who got, say, TP out of curiosity didn't like it enough to get SS. I dunno. Is there anyone on here who started with a modern 3D Zelda game and didn't like it enough to get the following entries?!

Much more interesting would be to know how many copies does a new home console TLoZ have to sell in order to be considered worth the effort.

Some of it is. PC.

My bad, I thought the Halo franchise was released on PC as well.