Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

BotW Wii U is sold out on Amazon UK while the Switch version is still available. Is this an indication of less stock or a more popular choice?

Obviously (at present) there are more Wii U owners than Switch owners - have Nintendo made a mistake offering BotW on both systems at the same time (Wii U sales could potentially hurt Switch sales, etc)? Anyone think this will be significant? I expect quite a few people will double dip anyway.

@Monkey_Balls It's Nintendo -> low stock.

Won't affect the Switch sales, at least not more than the backlash of cancelling the Wii U version would've caused.

@Monkey_Balls I think it's lower stock too cause they obviously want to sell more Switch copies (it means more Switch systems sold). The sooner they sell all Wii U copies, the sooner people will get Switch ones. And i'm talking as a Wii U owner that will take D1 both system and limited BOTW

Not much use having all these Switch copies if there's very few Switch consoles available though. You know it's almost certain there'll be stock issues with the Switch console, infact we kind of already know this is the case as Gamestop is already cancelling console preorders.

In amazon Mexico, the switch only lasted minutes before the preorders sold out

I think Ninty are playing the long game with Zelda Switch, well in general really as they prefer evergreen titles.

Think about it tho, have Zelda, their main game that can compete with the narrative 3rd person AAA titles on other consoles available from the start but also have it when it when the Switch is pushed for Xmas, when it eventually wins game of the year, when the console has a price cut etc.

That sounds about right — not sales necessarily, just acclaim. 2017 strikes me as a moral victories kind of year.

If Horizon or RDR2 wins GOTY instead of BOTW i'll get mad, for sure

@FGPackers If they are good games? As much as I'm looking forward to Zelda, I can't deny that what I've seen from Horizon looks like a better polished and fleshed out game; in terms of content, gameplay, level of detail, etc., the game seems to offer more than Zelda.

@Octane Just to say the least it has limited gameplay to me, cause the characther (don't remember her name) has only a bow as weapon, and in this Zelda you can finally play in a more stealth way too. At a pure graphical aspect i don't think any of the two has a edge, cause sometimes making a more realistic graphic can't be enough (anyone said The Order?) and both look fantastic. For gameplay i can't speak since i don't have played both of them, i think both are REALLY good on this. Considering what both games have to offer i just want to consider map sizes and content. On both sides BOTW seems to have the edge here, so...overall i think BOTW owns Horizon, but i'm not saying that Horizon will be a bad game, absolutely. I think it will be GOTY for Sony systems, not GOTY overall

@FGPackers Well, they're inevitably going to win somewhere. Unless Red Dead gets predictably delayed out of this year.

@Octane Really? I know that Monster Hunter-y combat looks very nice, but I don't see how you could find it a more mechanically advanced game than Breath of the Wild. Especially not more polished. Good god, it's a Nintendo game and it's Zelda. Just wait until you can compare the controls and responsiveness of the animations!

This is another point that i think Zelda will have HUGE advantage

There's been stealth in Zelda before; like the Hyrule Courtyard & Gerudo's Fortress in OoT, the Deku Palace & Pirates' Fortress in MM, Forsaken Fortress in WW and even the Oracles games had stealth in them.

@jump That was by design and restricted to that areas, now you can do it ALWAYS

I could do it in TP too, I was bombing around Hyrules Field looking for heart pieces last night and I could sneak up on Bulblin who weren't aware I was there.

@FGPackers Well, there's stealth in Horizon too. No idea how big the world of Horizon will be, but this is where I'm worried for Zelda. The world is huge, but there are only 76(?) quests. That's a lot less than TW3, and even that game felt sparse at times, and it's map was way smaller. We don't know how well the side quests are implemented either.

Look I'm excited for Zelda, but like @Haru17 said, because it's Zelda. Replace Link with any other character and it's just a game that looks neat that I'll probably play some day.

For all I know Horizon is going to be a complete dud, but I have a feeling that if it's good, it will be really good.

@Octane with stealth i meant that for the first time Zelda can be playable in a stealth way, so that's not a point of advantage for Horizon on the gameplay side (not anymore). I just meant that. For the world size and number of side quests i'm not worried: Zelda, with Aonuma and all of Nintendo saying this, is about exploring and adventuring. So i'll just take it with calm and ease and fully immerge myself into this massive, huge and fantastic world. I'm gonna live it and i think i'm gonna enjoy it really a lot this way. As i said, it's not a thing that worries me at all

@FGPackers That's not really a fair way of looking at it, is it? So Zelda gets a free point because it took them 30 years to implement stealth, and Horizon doesn't because it's a new IP?

@Octane No i was just considering gameplay options and both have a lot of possibilities, for example you can play both of them in a stealth way or not, the point about stealth was just this. Don't get me wrong i really like Horizon concept and all stuff, but i don't think it's a better game than BOTW. Simple as that

That's really not my point. I'm saying that Breath is most likely going to play better because it Zelda — a notoriously complex and seamless series – when compared to Horizon – an as of yet unproven new IP from FPS developers, a notoriously mechanically poor genre. That's not to say I'm down on Horizon, it's probably one of my most anticipated games this year and it's doing a really positive thing by having a female protagonist which Breath of the Wild has seemingly taken every opportunity to deny fans of even the option of. It's just launching against Zelda, which imposes a really clear choice upon me.

Moreover, this is inarguably the most ambitious Zelda of its decade. The guardian lasers creating spreading fires and updrafts with the horse vault and arrow time mechanics in place is highly complex and yet flawless design. And all the options to chop down, bomb over, and float trees completely revamps 90% of open world game worlds. And those are only two things to be excited for, far from simply 'because it's Zelda.'