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Discussion Kit and Krysta believe that Nintendo is disappointed in TOTK sales

Ex-Nintendo employees say Nintendo disappointed in game that came out a year and a half after they leave the company.
 
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Despite the clickbait title, it seems like they're referring to the frontloaded sales and the big drop after. That Nintendo would be disappointed in the legs of Tears.

And well, it's the end of the system's life. What are you gonna do? If the Next system has backwards compatibility, expect those numbers to steadily rise.
 
Nintendo expected lifetime sales for Animal Crossing New Horizons to be what it shipped in its first 11 days.

Said Animal Crossing game and Pokémon Scarlet and Violet (or Sword and Shield too? I can't recall) are the only first party games to have reached 20M faster than it did.

I believe there's literally no way in hell they're disappointed at TotK's sales.
 
As a shareholder, I am NOT disappointed in TOTK sales.

Hell...

Im not disappointed in Mario wonder, SMRPG, Pikmin 4, etc. They ALL did very well.

Golf clap for SMRPG! I knew it would sell well.
 
If this is true (which I find hard to believe) I hope they rethink pricing games at $70. I know I wouldn't buy it for a long time if I couldn't sell Xenoblade 3 at nearly the price I bought it for.
 
They think that Nintendo might be potentially disappointed with TotK's commercial performance relative to BotW's.
 
I get that it's hard to compare launch aligned sales when Switch had only sold 7.6 million after BOTW was on the market for six months as a launch title (4.6m sold then), versus TOTK launching with an install base of 125m after six months and maintaining 20m sold after roughly the same time period

I agree the numbers will rise over time with a new system, but I hope Nintendo sees this as an opportunity to be more aggressive in updating TOTK with a patch or something that can take full advantage of the extra horsepower nuSwitch will provide. Sure as hell that's one way to ensure people will still keep buying if they were on the fence about it before
 
I mean 20 million in a year is still like way higher than the total LTD of any Zelda game outside of BOTW.

But hey if Nintendo is a bit let down (which I somewhat doubt to be honest), nothing wrong with that, it will push them to make something more different next time. After BOTW + TOTK, I think probably a new direction is needed.
 
I mean, a direct sequel of a popular game netting 20 million in under a year, despite being on the same system as its predecessor and sitting at a higher price point (anecdotal, but those $10 are the difference between "make sacrifices elsewhere/work extra hours" and "nah i'll wait" for me) is nothing to scoff at.

Plus isn't the sales the number of copies directly ordered/shipped from Nintendo? If that's the case, the fact that all of those extra copies sold so quick that another ~750k were shipped is impressive.
 
I’m not shocked by the title or the content of their video. It’s not as if they’re usually incredibly relevant. I say that without any animosity. I would love what they do, but I never understood what their content brought, what their appeal was. I guess you have to have grown up with them, probably.
 
Ricimer said:
It does seem like the hype around TOTK fell off quickly online unlike BOTW.
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There’s way more to play nowadays then when BOTW released.

took a while for Switch to get going and whatnot. Now there’s like a new super big exciting game every few months
 
Assuming they're not completely full of shit, they're probably referring to how quickly the legs fell off

I could see Nintendo being annoyed by how frontloaded it was, even if the sales are still overall very good
 
carbvan said:
Nintendo employees say Nintendo disappointed in game that came out a year and a half after they leave the company.
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Lugia667 said:
former Nintendo employees of all people too
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Moreover, they only worked in the marketing department of Nintendo of America as PR faces (I think). Sometimes, people act like they have been something like Miyamoto's second-in-command for years... Their opinion is insightful, yes, but only as long as it is connected to their work while they were in the company.
 
Ricimer said:
It does seem like the hype around TOTK fell off quickly online unlike BOTW.
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BOTW was revolutionary, while TOTK was an iterative improvement. TOTK was the better game in my opinion, but the core game design just isn't very new anymore, despite all the cool additions. For me personally, while I had a ton of fun with TOTK, I stopped thinking about it almost immediately after finishing it, which is unusual for me.
 
I’m a pretty big totk hater, but I highly doubt this is true. Most of what we know about Nintendo compared to other companies paints them as far more conservative and realistic when it comes to what their games should sell.

Also, have these two ever actually known what’s going on at Nintendo proper? They’re podcast hosts that worked for Nintendo YouTube. They’re a couple steps above the Kevin Butler gag Sony did a while back, what insight would they actually have? At least that’s how it seemed to me.
 
Even if it was indeed front-loaded, no way 20 million would disappoint me, as gamer, investor, or even president lol
I think it will sell good in 2024 tho. It's a more complex and $10 more game than BotW, so I can understand.

Still must generate tons of money and Zelda is as alive as ever.
 
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Dark Cloud said:
$70 and 20 million in sales. Ok lol
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Lol. Other game companies would kill for these kind of sales. I read online that Breath of the Wild sold ten million in it's first year. TOTK has only been out for nine months and like you said it costs more.
 
Game deserves another shot in the arm with a Switch 2 patch.

I adore the game, did all the shrines, even I have stopped playing until the next console is out. Would prefer not to exhaust myself of the game when I could be playing it at a higher res and framerate potentially in the second half of the year.
 
They could be disappointed that ToTK doesn't have BoTW's legs, it could be true. It had a huge launch but the drop in sales was massive after the first quarter of its release. It didn't even reach the million for its first christmas. For example, I've always seen lots of TV spot for Nintendo games on TV, but ToTK, I still see almost every day a spot for ToTK, I guess they put a lot of money in the marketing, and it isn't even close to have BoTW's legs (and it has been barely 6 months), in the end. But that's just speculation, obviously.

I'd be curious to know if ToTK is as profitable as some other Nintendo games.
 
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im sorry but the more you guys post their content the more I'm convinced they just talk out of their ass 80% of the time.
 
Gingerbread Man said:
Moreover, they only worked in the marketing department of Nintendo of America as PR faces (I think). Sometimes, people act like they have been something like Miyamoto's second-in-command for years... Their opinion is insightful, yes, but only as long as it is connected to their work while they were in the company.
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Be hired for pure marketing work. Quit this job. Explain at length how hard it was for them to realize that this pure marketing work actually involved doing...marketing. Launch a Youtube channel. Apply cheap marketing methods to this channel.
 
Their content is such an embarrassment. I expected much better when they announced it. They should have so much valuable insight into the industry yet they seem to go after the worst of the YouTube meta.

On the topic of TotK sales performance.
It has sold over 20 million copies in less then 8 months. It almost sold as much as TERF Game, a game on like 350 million consoles plus PC that’s out longer. It has not even had any discounts at all and no DLC.
There is no way this is true. And I doubt they would know anyway.
 
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Ricimer said:
It does seem like the hype around TOTK fell off quickly online unlike BOTW.
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I'm not surprised. The building system isn't as impactful on gameplay as botw's more simplistic approach. Building a mech that stomps on a korok is a funny novelty, but doesn't bring much to actual gameplay imo. Seeing stuff like that on twitter doesn't actually make me want to go play the game. Where as seeing clips of what people were doing in Botw, even years after release, was much more impressive and made me want to revisit the game constantly.

unit 9s said:
BOTW was revolutionary, while TOTK was an iterative improvement. TOTK was the better game in my opinion, but the core game design just isn't very new anymore, despite all the cool additions. For me personally, while I had a ton of fun with TOTK, I stopped thinking about it almost immediately after finishing it, which is unusual for me.
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It's partly that, but it's not even the main issue imo. I think it's more so the direction they took, that in making player freedom as wide as possible, it ended up being fairly shallow compared to Botw. Building allows you to do anything you want, but the challenges you need to overcome rarely require more than using the same vehicle over and over. Botw rewarded you more for thinking creatively, because your toolset was much more limited. You had to use more of what was around at any given moment rather than having countless machines in your pocket.
 
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Kit and Krysta's strength is when they discuss stories from their Nintendo days. It's genuinely a unique proposition for a channel. The moment they start playing industry analysts is when the channel falls apart. Not to mention the clickbait.
 
Ganondorf : Do not look away. You witness a king's revival, and the birth of his new wor-
Kit : Nah, sorry Ganny, your game is disappointing, sales wise.
Ganondorf : Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah !
 
These people were and are podcast hosts, they didn't know dick-all more than any of us about what was going at Nintendo even when they were employed by them, let alone now.
 
I doubt they’re disappointed. The circumstances are totally different: most core audiences already own a Switch, so very front loaded sales make sense; it was likely the most hyped game they’ve made, so again, front loaded; console sales are dropping, and new owners won’t necessarily pick up the second Zelda title over the first, etc.

More than anything else though - 20+ million sales is a triumph.

I have a feeling they’d have expected this. It makes sense that they’d seek to get extend its legs in the new generation, especially as it’s doubtful we’ll see a new entry from this that team soon. Won’t be long before we know for sure.
 
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I'm sure they know quite a bit more than most of us what Nintendo would think, but I'm really skeptical of this one. This is the second game in the (main) series on the Switch, launching near the end of the life cycle, comes in at a premium price point, and still immediately skyrocketed past 20 million units.

I do think the momentum is weak for future sales though - it's clearly not going to come that close to BoTW unless we get a special edition for the next console. Would I buy the idea that Nintendo projected a slightly higher number - maybe. But I doubt they are too upset about this one.
 
soundchaser said:
I know this isn't a novel observation, but my god do I hate YouTube thumbnail face in all its forms.
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Small tangent rant but

YouTube thumbnail face is just a symptom tip-of-the-iceburg effect of the ugly monster of internet impressions and algorithms. See: Instagram/FB reel previews of Popular videos and those terrible fake article ads at the bottom of random websites.

I've seen the worst and ugliest pictures served to me just because it appeals/intrigues our monkey brains and other people click on them too much.
 
Naw.

As much as I believe Nintendo will be thinking about how to maximise evergreen sales of Mario Wonder and Tears of the Kingdom as they transition to new hardware, they won't for one second be disappointed at selling 20 million copies in 7 months. Regardless of when or how those sales happened, or what proportion were launch and what were post launch, those are all sales to Nintendo, and they're all at full price. And that's ~66% of what Breath of the Wild has sold in less than a tenth of the time on the market (7 months for Tears vs 79 months for Breath of the Wild). Obviously, given the different points at which these games launched in the Switch lifecycle, this is also what we should expect.

Sure, those legs don't look impressive, but that's because the game reached a huge proportion of its potential audience rapidly. If we were to compare it to other late console Zelda titles, the ratios are also impressive on that front. Majora's Mask sold less than half of Ocarina of Time; Spirit Tracks sold about 60% of Phantom Hourglass's lifetime sales; Skyward Sword sold less than half as much as Twilight Princess. In terms of audience retention for the series and a Nintendo sequel generally, the game is also doing solidly by historic standards.
 
Ricimer said:
It does seem like the hype around TOTK fell off quickly online unlike BOTW.
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This is always an awful take for whatever game it's made about. Some of the most played games every year get absolutely no hype or discussion in the gamer (tm) bubble like Minecraft, Valorant, or League of Legends. Meanwhile one of the most discussed games of the past few months has been Suicide Squad, a game that's an absolute bomb but dissecting its corpse has been a favorite pass time for many.
 
MisterSpo said:
Naw.

As much as I believe Nintendo will be thinking about how to maximise evergreen sales of Mario Wonder and Tears of the Kingdom as they transition to new hardware, they won't for one second be disappointed at selling 20 million copies in 7 months. Regardless of when or how those sales happened, or what proportion were launch and what were post launch, those are all sales to Nintendo, and they're all at full price. And that's ~66% of what Breath of the Wild has sold in less than a tenth of the time on the market (7 months for Tears vs 79 months for Breath of the Wild). Obviously, given the different points at which these games launched in the Switch lifecycle, this is also what we should expect.

Sure, those legs don't look impressive, but that's because the game reached a huge proportion of its potential audience rapidly. If we were to compare it to other late console Zelda titles, the ratios are also impressive on that front. Majora's Mask sold less than half of Ocarina of Time; Spirit Tracks sold about 60% of Phantom Hourglass's lifetime sales; Skyward Sword sold less than half as much as Twilight Princess. In terms of audience retention for the series and a Nintendo sequel generally, the game is also doing solidly by historic standards.
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People often can't see the forest through the trees with Switch game sales too. 20 million sales puts is somewhere near the bottom of the top 50 best selling games of all time. If you only count single SKU, non pack-in, single platform games, it jumps up to probably the top 20. And it just came released, relatively speaking. It sold phenomenally well.
 
I really hate how they lean into the clickbait.

There is no world in which TotK sales are a disappointment. 20 mil in 7 months. C’mon now.
 
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