• Hey everyone, staff have documented a list of banned content and subject matter that we feel are not consistent with site values, and don't make sense to host discussion of on Famiboards. This list (and the relevant reasoning per item) is viewable here.

Sales Data Updated sales numbers for Switch titles: Tears of the Kingdom (18.51M), and more (UPDATE: new sales numbers for many other games, see threadmarks)

Reader mode
hologram said:
What is this assumption based on?
Click to expand...
just general sales trends. botw has sold 32.25M (switch + wii u combined), totk just sold 18.5 million in a month and a half. even tho botw is not done selling it's a very safe bet that totk will catch up. it's probably gonna be at like near 25 million by the end of this year, a successor to switch is nowhere in sight until late 2024 and even then there's no reason totk will stop selling.
 
mazi said:
just general sales trends. botw has sold 32.25M (switch + wii u combined), totk just sold 18.5 million in a month and a half. even tho botw is not done selling it's a very safe bet that totk will catch up. it's probably gonna be at like near 25 million by the end of this year, a successor to switch is nowhere in sight until late 2024 and even then there's no reason totk will stop selling.
Click to expand...
25 million is easy money. I even think we may hit that by end of october. once we hit the holiday season, it's game over.
 
I've been pretty pessimistic about Xenoblade 3's performance in general ever since I finished the game but was not expecting it to still be behind DE at this point.
Maybe the DLC expansion will help a bit but damn.
 
hologram said:
By that logic, why does Nintendo develop any games that are not Mario games, Animal Crossing, fitness games, or open air Zelda?
Click to expand...
The point is that a traditional Zelda has a direct opportunity cost of another open air Zelda that will make 3x-4x the sales in roughly the same amount of development time. It’s one thing if they outsource a traditional game to another team, but from the standpoint of what the Zelda team should be putting their efforts into, it’s just way more financial sense for Nintendo to be directing them towards more open air games.
 
Insane number for Zelda. It didn't get to the 20m that Scarlet and Violet did, but that was expected and TotK is gonna have way better legs than S/V. It did eclipse every other Pokémon first quarter sales prior to SV right?

Nice to have confirmation that Dread surpassed 3m(even tho I still hope for it to go higher), happy to see the Bayonetta 1 physical release did have some effects since it passed 1m and even surpassed Bayo 2. All Bayo trilogy above 1m now!! Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has got amazing legs and it's definitely passing 3m now. Three Houses did 4m+!!! Definitely deserved, it's one of my favorite games of all time and it's my most played Switch game.

I can't wait for the numbers that Super Mario Bros. Wonder will do.
 
the issue is not really sales for a lot of nintendo series, it's finding a developer who can do the series justice. a new traditional 3D zelda is sure to hit 10 million in sales at the very least, but who is going to make one to nintendo's standards? after the massive success of botw and totk i'm sure the main zelda team is already thinking about the next open world game, and with zelda being such a prestige IP for nintendo it's not like they can just ask for pitches from random studios.
 
Renmazuo said:
I've been pretty pessimistic about Xenoblade 3's performance in general ever since I finished the game but was not expecting it to still be behind DE at this point.
Maybe the DLC expansion will help a bit but damn.
Click to expand...
Were Xenoblade 3 numbers updated? I don't think so?
 
Christo750 said:
25 million is easy money. I even think we may hit that by end of october. once we hit the holiday season, it's game over.
Click to expand...
yeah. with 18.5 million in 1.5 months, and additional 7 million for the remaining 6 months of the years is a very conservative estimate. we've already seen the weekly/monthly sales charts for july and the game is not slowing down.
 
Renmazuo said:
I've been pretty pessimistic about Xenoblade 3's performance in general ever since I finished the game but was not expecting it to still be behind DE at this point.
Maybe the DLC expansion will help a bit but damn.
Click to expand...
…we don’t have any new XC3 numbers yet, so we can’t really say it’s behind DE. In fact, when you adjust for launch timing, XC3 is ahead of both DE and XC2 as of March 2023.
 
Instro said:
Were Xenoblade 3 numbers updated? I don't think so?
Click to expand...
the latest number we have for 3 is 1.86 million as of march 2023, which puts it behind 2 (2.7M) and DE (1.88M), both as of december 2022. 3 will ofc surpass DE when we next get numbers for it.
 
mazi said:
just general sales trends. botw has sold 32.25M (switch + wii u combined), totk just sold 18.5 million in a month and a half. it's a very safe bet that it'll catch up. it's probably gonna be at like near 25 million by the end of this year, a successor to switch is nowhere in sight until late 2024 and even then there's no reason totk will stop selling.
Click to expand...
But what sales trends are you citing? What precedent do we have for an evergreen launch title to get a direct sequel released late in the consoles life, launch with roughly 55-60% of the original's sales, then go on to outsell it lifetime?

I think given the reception BOTW got, the pre-release hype of TOTK, and the large Switch install base, a huge launch for TOTK was always a given. It's the legs that have always been in question. And fundamentally, for TOTK to outsell BOTW we would need more people who didn't buy BOTW to buy TOTK than people who bought BOTW but didn't buy TOTK. Certainly the reception TOTK has received could bump up that latter number higher than it would typically be for a direct sequel, but I just don't see it being enough.

My prediction is that, by the end of the financial year, TOTK is at 25-28 million units sold, and after that, its quarterly unit sales are higher than BOTW's but not by enough to ever realistically catch up.
 
Was hoping for a big better legs on Dread, but nice that it cracked 3m. It's been getting a lot more sales this year, so between that and the Prime release, hopefully it keeps climbing.

mazi said:
the latest number we have for 3 is 1.86 million as of march 2023, which puts it behind 2 (2.7M) and DE (1.88M), both as of december 2022. 3 will ofc surpass DE when we next get numbers for it.
Click to expand...
Ah ok we are on the same page then. The legs on DE and 2 are pretty interesting at this stage. Sale prices plus the release of 3 must have helped.
 
0
mazi said:
yeah. with 18.5 million in 1.5 months, and additional 7 million for the remaining 6 months of the years is a very conservative estimate. we've already seen the weekly/monthly sales charts for july and the game is not slowing down.
Click to expand...
18.5M was in 1.5 months but we know for a fact at least 10M of that was by day 3. I'd assume at least 15M was within the first month, probably more than that.

It's hard to make extrapolations like this for games with huge openings, you need more data before you can confidently say the sales pace is still extremely high.
 
i guess we'll see. thankfully with both games being in the switch top 10 list we'll get updates for them every quarter for many years to come. personally i have no doubt that by the end of 2025 (at most) totk will be ahead of botw but i could be wrong of course.
 
0
Skittzo said:
18.5M was in 1.5 months but we know for a fact at least 10M of that was by day 3. I'd assume at least 15M was within the first month, probably more than that.

It's hard to make extrapolations like this for games with huge openings, you need more data before you can confidently say the sales pace is still extremely high.
Click to expand...
The 10M was sell-through. So it took 3 days to 10M and 46 days to sell additional 5.7M.
 
0
Linkstrikesback said:
I think the reason donkey Kong went on a hiatus again is because of how huge the drop is from DKCR.

DKCR did 4.2m first month, tropical freeze switch took years to get there.

They won't just do DKCR 3 since they've been down that road with DK before and the games just kept selling less. DK will appear again when they've got a new idea and probably not before.
Click to expand...
I mean TF was fucked releasing on the Wii U AND had a flurry of negative publicity because of the absolute whine fest that surrounded it and how "Retro NEEDED TO SAVE METROID AND THE WII U".

They put it on a good console with better word of mouth and it sold almost 5 million copies even with a $10 markup and no real push around it. Most developers and publishers would love that success. It'd be like throwing out 2D Mario because they saw a dip in NSMBU and NSMB2 from DS and Wii.

Also, DKC3 was the weird one that launched after the N64 with Kiddy Kong... I don't think it's fair to use it as part of the major decline or indicate DKC can't be a really damn good franchise from a sales perspective. Tropical Freeze is now beating every Kirby game besides Forgotten Land.

I don't buy this at all, DKC selling a good 5 million is a fantastic number. DKC1 and DKCR are huge anomalies of the right place at the right time, something New Horizons will likely always be too.
 
Also, damn Scarlet/Violet don't seem to have the legs people predicted. Which I'm not surprised by, nor do I have a horse in its race, but people predicted HUGE sales carrying over into 2023 and that doesn't seem to have been the case.
 
Link's Awakening (2019) at 6.46 million is the real Classic Zelda sales story. Surely it's now (with another 7 months of sales since the white papers update) overtaken Zelda (NES) and is the fifth best selling title in the series. March on, my favourite game.
 
MisterSpo said:
Link's Awakening (2019) at 6.46 million is the real Classic Zelda sales story. Surely it's now overtaken Zelda (NES) and is the fifth best selling title in the series. March on, my favourite game.
Click to expand...
Passing Zelda 1 would make it the best selling 2D game, which makes me happy
 
MisterSpo said:
Link's Awakening (2019) at 6.46 million is the real Classic Zelda sales story. Surely it's now (with another 7 months of sales since the white papers update) overtaken Zelda (NES) and is the fifth best selling title in the series. March on, my favourite game.
Click to expand...
I'm still upset we haven't gotten an original 2D Zelda on Switch. It's been four years since Link's Awakening...
 
EricTheGamerman said:
Also, damn Scarlet/Violet don't seem to have the legs people predicted. Which I'm not surprised by, nor do I have a horse in its race, but people predicted HUGE sales carrying over into 2023 and that doesn't seem to have been the case.
Click to expand...
It's got better legs then Sw/Sh in the same time frame
 
0
Linkstrikesback said:
I think the reason donkey Kong went on a hiatus again is because of how huge the drop is from DKCR.

DKCR did 4.2m first month, tropical freeze switch took years to get there.

They won't just do DKCR 3 since they've been down that road with DK before and the games just kept selling less. DK will appear again when they've got a new idea and probably not before.
Click to expand...
I think a big part of DKTF decline has simply to do with it being at the wrong place at the wrong time. It was relased on WiiU in a period when fans were expecting the "next-gen" Nintendo experience (the BOTW/Odissey moment), but instead Nintendo released a surplus of 2D platformers in a short span. Even the new 3D Mario of the time played and felt more similar to 2D titles. On Switch it was just treated as a complementary release with little to no marketing push (and it was still a full priced port). Basically, Nintendo did (unintentionally) everything in their power to make it flop.

Another important thing to factor in, is that in 2010 (when DKCR released) 2D platformers were still almost a dead genre on home consoles (Mario had basically just revied them) and there were only a handful of good indie titles on XBLA/PSN. When DKCTF released there were alrady lots of very good indie titles in that space, so I think that makes harder for people to justify the full price.

So I agree Nintendo needs to renovate to make it properly stand out from both Mario and the plethora of games in the indie scene.
 
Last edited:
mazi said:
just general sales trends. botw has sold 32.25M (switch + wii u combined), totk just sold 18.5 million in a month and a half. even tho botw is not done selling it's a very safe bet that totk will catch up. it's probably gonna be at like near 25 million by the end of this year, a successor to switch is nowhere in sight until late 2024 and even then there's no reason totk will stop selling.
Click to expand...
As you said, BOTW is still going to keep selling, so the number TOTK has to beat will be 35M at the least. If TOTK does end up reaching 25M by the end of this financial year, that's still a 10m shortfall is has to make up. If we presume that TOTK has the same kind of legs that BOTW enjoyed (averaging around 5M a year), that's going to take at least two years to catch up, during which we'll have a new console and new games hogging the spotlight and sales momentum.

It's not impossible, and we'll likely know more this time next year when we can look what its legs are like, but I think people really underestimate how big an ask it will be for TOTK to make it. BOTW has just had too big a head start. Only way I personally can see it happening is if Nintendo release a significant content patch for for TOTK to coincide with the Switch 2 launch and give it a second boost.
 
I think it's more likely DK went on "hiatus" because Retro didn't want to make a 3rd and Nintendo didn't have a producer/team with a unique idea to push for a new entry. We've seen many times with Nintendo that having the right team championing your ip is often more valuable then actually selling well, lets call it the Chibi-Robo theorem.
 
EAD Ninja said:
Is there an archive / link to see the entire list?
Click to expand...
check out this thread

2023 CESA Games White Paper-additional shipment data domestical and international

https://www.cesa.or.jp/information/release/202307310945.html Updated Domestic Million Shipment Titles(As of December 2022): Animal Crossing New Horizon -10.61m Pokemon Scarlet/Violet-6.94m Mario Kart 8 Deluxe-6.84m Splatoon 3-6.32m Yo-kai Watch 2 Bony Spirits/Fleshy Souls/Psychic...
www.installbaseforum.com www.installbaseforum.com
 
BassForever said:
I think it's more likely DK went on "hiatus" because Retro didn't want to make a 3rd and Nintendo didn't have a producer/team with a unique idea to push for a new entry. We've seen many times with Nintendo that having the right team championing your ip is often more valuable then actually selling well, lets call it the Chibi-Robo theorem.
Click to expand...
They didn’t champion chibi robo, that was torturing chibi robo until it finally died without a chance of ever coming back.
 
0
God Dread's legs are pretty eh. I guess it's somewhat softened by being a 9 month period (March - December) rather than a 12 month but, even as someone who doesn't think of themselves as a sales overhyper I was expecting more in line with 3.2-3.4 million sales by now. Just goes to show that even by Nintendo not every game can have amazing legs.
 
0
I don't think TotK beats BotW on Switch alone, especially given the latter has had so much more time with the install base, that said, if it gets ported to Switch next then who knows.
 
0
Christo750 said:
also it's pretty clear at this point, $70 games are here to stay. if people think it's worth it, they'll pay it.
Click to expand...
Knowing what I know today, I would have paid 90 bucks for zelda ToTK easily.

I wouldn’t pay that same cash for a single ps5 game. So Zelda can’t be the norm because it is a unicorn.
 
Doing some thinking about TotK and the future of the series with this new sales info in mind.

TOTK was very heavily developed and marketed as a BotW sequel. Part of that of course was to maximize resources, but I do wonder if it was because Nintendo was almost unsure how the brand new and massive BotW audience would react if the series shifted to a new era and characters immediately after BotW like it normally does.

The fact that they draw attention to the growing number of people who haven’t played BotW jumping into TOTK makes me wonder if it surprised them. Maybe now they feel more confident that the series doesn’t need to continue with the BotW characters or even world, people will just jump in based on this open-air style.
 
Skittzo said:
There's something to the idea that certain games are big system sellers while other games are just massive software movers, and I think Wonder will move a ton of copies but won't really make a major impact on consoles sold like TOTK did.

Depends on what else there is to the game though. As of now it just looks like a really, really good 2D Mario, which is something that will resonate well with the current owners but I'm not sure how much more it'll bring in.
Click to expand...
Just hypothetical, I have no data whatsoever to back this tbh, but wouldn't Nintendo be able to push hardware sales by creating Wonder-bundles or even a Wonder Special Edition OLED Switch? I have no idea how good these kind of editions sell but at least some hardcore fans will grab em. If priced correctly it might give hardware sales a push.
 
0
Phendrift said:
Jesus Christ.

The plumber should be thankful he has his karting pastime, because there’s genuinely a chance mainline Zelda has become a bigger juggernaut than mainline Mario.

Like… I don’t see Wonder outdoing this. It’s going to soar past Odyssey too, we haven’t even hit its first holiday.

You can’t even make the Wonder will outleg it argument, because BotW is an extremely leggy title
Click to expand...
Calmos Zelda fans. Let's not compared 2 Zelda games selling amazing to all the Mario games selling amazing on the Switch cuz Link boy would get put in his place real quick. Mario fans have way more than just 2 must have games to choose from. Bwuahaha
 
Linkstrikesback said:
I think the reason donkey Kong went on a hiatus again is because of how huge the drop is from DKCR.

DKCR did 4.2m first month, tropical freeze switch took years to get there.

They won't just do DKCR 3 since they've been down that road with DK before and the games just kept selling less. DK will appear again when they've got a new idea and probably not before.
Click to expand...
I don't think it has something to do with that. The WiiU was a huge flop and even mario 3d world only sold a bit over 5million(it also had the holiday boost and... it's mario). Tropical freeze on WiiU did a bit over 2 million (and it was pushed back from it's original holiday 2013 slot, which mario got).
The Wii was a huge success, the switch is as well, but tropical freeze is just a port which is not going to set anything on fire.
Mario kart and mario in general is another story, that's their flagship title which is going to sell anyway.
I bet if Nintendo released a 2d donkey Kong with krool and more dkc elements, that game would sell. But we will never know cause they're not showing anything.
 
Christo750 said:
if rumors and reports are to be believed, it has someone arguably more important than any of those as a first step: Miyamoto. he really wants it to come home. I think DK will find a team within EPD.


i agree there is still a market for them, but after today's news it's pretty clear that it's a much smaller market and not a priority anymore. i want another one too, but i think that's something we all need to make peace with. only so many classic 3D Zelda games to remaster, and i can't see resources being taken away from "open-air 3" to make another OOT thing.
Click to expand...
I really hope Miyamoto will show us a big budget DK game
 
0
xV_twist said:
Calmos Zelda fans. Let's not compared 2 Zelda games selling amazing to all the Mario games selling amazing on the Switch cuz Link boy would get put in his place real quick. Mario fans have way more than just 2 must have games to choose from. Bwuahaha
Click to expand...
It is pretty wild that it may end up that both Zeldas sell better than all the Mario games, including the mainline ones (other than Kart) though. Not cumulatively, of course, but that never would've been considered plausible before this gen.

The second Zelda potentially selling better than the mainline Mario? The Majora's Mask/Skyward Sword? Crazy.
 
0
Happy to see Dread over 3m.

But holy hell, Three Houses over 4m makes me so happy. I adore that game. Really hope that return to that caliber of game after Engage.
 
Scarlet and Violet did gangbusters.

With the DLC bump and a whole nother holiday season, it'll overtake SWSH, which would be the first time Pokemon had the second generation they release on a system overtake the first generation they release on it. (RBY outsold GSC, DP ousold BW, and XY outsold SM).

Both that and Tears of the Kingdom just goes to show the Switch has momentum like never before, people arent losing interest halfway through the generation, they're coming back and they want more.

SWSH suffered from an extremley controversial pre launch because of people dogging it for Dexit and the graphics, while SV suffered from an extremly controversial post launch from the technical issues. I think if REDACTED keeps up the momentum, and Gamefreak manages to gets a smooth and non controversial release (Like Legends proved they still can) for Gen 10, then Red and Blue's record might be going down.
 
Last edited:
0
It's crazy that NSMB U can be at 16 mil while legacy Zelda like Skyward Sword sits at 4 mil.

It's not a bad number, and maybe Skyward Sword just has a mixed vibe around it... but idk. Hoping for more numbers when TP and WW release.
 
DKCTF strikes me as a game that would've done better on a supposed Wii HD. people were looking for the next gen experience from both Nintendo and Retro and it just underwhelmed. people have rightfully acknowledged it as the near-perfect game it is but it was not the right time for it for sure.
 
Notsowise said:
Knowing what I know today, I would have paid 90 bucks for zelda ToTK easily.

I wouldn’t pay that same cash for a single ps5 game. So Zelda can’t be the norm because it is a unicorn.
Click to expand...
i said the same thing when the issue of price came up in 2018. would've paid $100 for BOTW. would've paid $100 for TOTK.
 
0
Reader mode
You must log in or register to reply here.


Back
Top Bottom