The Legend of Zelda - Series Sales

The Legend of Zelda - Series Sales

Understanding Sales Data
This section lists the last-known global shipment figure for every mainline game in. The information in this section has been sourced from a variety of financial publications, events, and developer keynotes including those held by Nintendo.

Main Series
''A note regarding Breath of the Wild: It is commonly misreported that the game needed to sell 2 million units to "break even". This is untrue and appears to be based on a statement by Nintendo that was misconstrued. The exact quote from Nintendo mentions that the company aims to have most of its games sell "at least two million units" as a general rule of thumb, in order to ensure profitability while supporting other risky endeavors.''

Trends to note:

• The three best-selling games in the Zelda series (,, and ) all feature the ability to explore a vast, connected world, with Link riding on horseback. In addition, they all feature realistically-proportioned characters—including Link himself. Remarks from Nintendo suggest the company is aware of the appeal of these traits.

• 3D Zelda games that do not feature a combination of realistically-proportioned characters, horseback-riding, and a vast, connected world have typically not performed as well. These include, , and SS -.

• Nintendo has acknowledged the fact that  is not as popular with audiences due to the fact that it does not feature a realistically-proportioned Link, and that the company is unlikely to revisit a super-deformed style within a 3D Zelda game for this reason.

• Nintendo has also acknowledged that audiences did not appreciate the removal of a large, connected world in SS -, which led the Zelda team to return to a more exploration-focused template with, similar to.

• Multiplayer Zelda games have historically not performed as well as the single player games. sold poorly and Nintendo has not publicly revealed sales figures for the game. has sold just over 1.36 million units globally and is presently the second-weakest selling game in the series behind.

Remakes
Note: "Remake" in this case refers to a remaster or ground-up remake of the game in question. Re-releases through Virtual Console (etc.) do not count.

Trends to note:

• While  is among the highest-selling games in the series,  is the lowest-selling of all the remasters. Presumably, this is because The HD remaster of wasn't as visually striking as the remasters for  or, both of which featured significant visual upgrades. was also released on an already unsuccessful platform, towards the end of its life cycle. Additionally, was already playable on the Wii U through backwards compatibility with the Wii version, which may have affected its reception.

•  is the only Zelda remake/remaster to sell more than the original game it was based on. This is partly because it was released after (which introduced a large number of new players to the series) and partly due to the strengths of the Switch as a software-selling platform. Finally, the game also features the most significant visual upgrade of any Zelda remake to date.

Japanese Sales
Important facts to know about sales data from Japan:

• All figures in this section account for retail sales only. Digital sell-through data is not consistently available.

• All Japanese sales data has been provided by videogame publication Famitsu, which tracks games sales across a wide range of Japanese retailers. (Archived by Game Data Library)

• Unlike global sales data, this data represents sell-through to actual customers, not just shipments to retailers.

• Some of the ancillary notes mentioned against each game are observations using figures from a separate sales tracker, Media Create.

• The Japanese videogame market is much smaller than North America or Europe, which is why sales appear lower in comparison. Over 70% of Nintendo's revenue is from overseas.

Main Series
Important facts to know about the Japanese videogame market:

• In the early 2000s, Japan's videogame industry began to decline. This phenomenon was referred to as "gamer drift"—audiences drifting away from playing games.

• Nintendo has pointed to gamer drift as the cause behind persistently low sales of Zelda and other games in Japan, starting with.

• Throughout the Wii era, Nintendo was under the impression that Japanese players didn't enjoy getting lost, which led to the company developing games with simpler environmental layouts designed to combat gamer drift.

• This theory has been disproven of late. Of all the Zeldas, and  have been the most effective at combating gamer drift, as demonstrated by their sales.

• Despite being a sprawling and open-ended adventure, was popular with a wider audience due to its accessible touch controls and by being on the Nintendo DS.

• Similarly, succeeded in Japan despite being a larger, more sprawling game. Part of the reason for this is that the game was released on a portable platform; however Nintendo has also since acknowledged that the concept of being lost in a game's environments can make for an engaging experience.

• Over the last two decades, the only platforms that have consistently managed to combat gamer drift in Japan are portable devices (Nintendo DS, PSP, 3DS, and Switch) as demonstrated by hardware sales in the region. • The vast majority of Japan's software sales in the videogame space have also come from portable platforms during this period.

Remakes
Note: "Remake" in this case refers to a remaster or ground-up remake of the game in question. Re-releases through Virtual Console (etc.) do not count.