Sales Data The Legend of Zelda Moves 10 Million Units in 3 Days; 2.24M Units in Japan, 4M Units in the Americas

[Dunban]

At the same time, the IP is now way bigger than ever. Remakes and 2D games can sell big too - not nearly this big, but more than enough to be worth it.

For sure, hopefully they have an original game in the works that will scratch that itch for those missing it. There's still room for it in between these open world games since they take quite a long time to make. It's crazy to see the IP grow like this though since direct sequels don't always sell as well, it's like the series been renewed for a new age.

 

[HyruleTemplar]

Wow, I can't believe it! Just a month ago, I was expressing my hopes with all sorts of hypotheticals and modal verbs, saying, "I wish the D1 sales could reach over 10m." And the dream comes TRUE! I'm ecstatic!!
It's a milestone achievement, and I hope TotK continues to break new records in the future!

 

[Falcatops]

I really strongly suspect that if there's a Zelda movie you'll hear stylised covers of licensed songs like bardcore stuff or when they put a 'traditional version' of a k-pop song in Alchemy of Souls. You will see a Link training montage to something resembling Whitesnake.

Hearts (Containers) On Fire

 

[MMXZero]

Pictured: Koei Tecmo learning about this and trying to get a new Hyrule Warriors greenlit ASAP

This should be Scamco if they are actually planning to re-remaster Soulcalibur II.

 

[Marce-chan]

It's really close to Pokémon, both in the 10m range(but SV surpassed it a tiny bit seeing it was mentioned as best selling first 3 days ever and TotK didn't).
So, literally unless Wii Fit/Wii Fit Plus did some shocking first 3 days number, Tears of the Kingdom did end up being the biggest launch ever for Nintendo in revenue.
It's completely insane!!
We might be looking at some colossal Q1 sales just like SV, being around 20m).
But I do believe it'll behave more akin to Pokémon games in terms of legs than Animal Crossing New Horizons (I mean that one did 30m in 8 months, complete insanity).
In revenue it might get close or surpass BotW by the end of this FY. Completely insane.

 

[Apopheniac]

Game Data Library has BotW at 3.5m in Japan with digital, so TotK isn't past it yet. Still, it's significant that TotK is over halfway there in Japan while being less than halfway internationally.

 

[totofogo]

Wait, how on earth is it possible that it outsold lifetime sales for botw in Japan already!? Especially being a sequel, I'm shocked.

EDIT: lol well timed post above @Apopheniac

 

[Gianko]

And how many Switch too?

 

[Scrawnton]

Those poor Koroks.

 

[invwar]

Game Data Library has BotW at 3.5m in Japan with digital, so TotK isn't past it yet. Still, it's significant that TotK is over halfway there in Japan while being less than halfway internationally.

Where is the 3.5m coming from? The confirmed number we have is 2,167,671 from Famitsu and as a start title BOTW is unlikely a typical coupon game, not so sure if 30% of its sales are really digital. But yeah they are possible.

 

[afternoon delight]

Hearts (Containers) On Fire

Sidon’s desire rages deep withiiiiiin

 

[Catalyst]

Where is the 3.5m coming from? The confirmed number we have is 2,167,671 from Famitsu and as a start title BOTW is unlikely a typical coupon game, not so sure if 30% of its sales are really digital. But yeah they are possible.

3.53m comes from Nintendo’s own fiscal reports. If you add up what BOTW sold in Japan every fiscal year up to March 2023 you get 3.53m.

 

[Comic Obsessed]

Redundant comment: Totally deserved.

Just got my copy and the sense of freedom and creativity this gives you is even greater than BOTW.

 

[Apopheniac]

Put another way, Japan accounts for about 12% of BotW's total sales, and around 21% of TotK's total sales. That's a 75% increase in the proportion of domestic sales from BotW to TotK.

 

[Multiverse]

I have to admit I was wrong about the marketing of this game. I thought the marketing was bad compared to BOTW, but now I think it’s genius. BOTW needed that intense marketing because it was launching on the back of a failed system and a poorly-sold Zelda game. It‘s also launching on a system that hasn’t sold a single unit yet. TOTK had a huge foundation (a huge install base) and awareness already built into the brand. Although, the marketing for TOTK did ramp up quite a bit closer to release. The trailers were played in theaters in front of the Mario Movie, for example. But it was still a much shorter campaign compared to BOTW.

They did the right thing by not revealing too much pre-launch and letting the players discover the game themselves. Actually creating more mystery, hype, and discussion leading up to launch and during launch week.

 

[kvetcha]

I have to admit I was wrong about the marketing of this game. I thought the marketing was bad compared to BOTW, but now I think it’s genius. BOTW needed that intense marketing because it was launching on the back of a failed system and a poorly sold Zelda game. It‘s also launching on system that haven’t sold a single unit yet. TOTK had a huge foundation (huge installbase) and awareness already built into the brand.

They did the right thing by not revealing too much pre-launch and lets the players discover the game themselves. Actually creating more mystery, hype, and discussion leading to launch and during launch week.

In a sense, BotW itself was the bulk of the marketing.

 

[Imitatio]

The Legend of Money: Money of the Kingdom

Money

 

[Jbone916]

It’s an absolutely fantastic game that will be played and discussed for many, many years. Congrats to the developers for their innovation and thanks to the business for giving the creators the time and budget they needed to make this!

 

[Hajeman]

So crazy. Latest FY Nintendo made $3.7 billion operating profit & Playstation made $1.8 billion operating profit. I'm believed that FY23/24 operating profit will be more than $4 billion

 

[Subrosian Link]

How much would be the budget for a game like this?

 

[Regulus Tera]

The Japanese numbers are insane. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it already outsold Breath of the Wild, right?

Zelda is now selling Final Fantasy-like numbers before Final Fantasy decided to shoot itself on the foot in Japan.

 

["James"]

Considering Nintendo for years really wanted 3D Zelda to be bigger in Japan I have to imagine they're utterly thrilled seeing they've broken that ice finally.

 

[meatbag]

How much would be the budget for a game like this?

IIRC Breath of the Wild needed to sell two million copies to break even, so approximately 120M USD. TotK will already have profited from unit sales even if it had double the budget.

Zelda is now selling Final Fantasy-like numbers before Final Fantasy decided to shoot itself on the foot in Japan

To be fair Final Fantasy has been on a decline in Japan anyway. But yeah it will be interesting to see how that performs.

 

[Regulus Tera]

IIRC Breath of the Wild needed to sell two million copies to break even, so approximately 120M USD. TotK will already have profited from unit sales even if it had double the budget.


To be fair Final Fantasy has been on a decline in Japan anyway. But yeah it will be interesting to see how that performs.

When I say FF shot itself on the foot I'm talking around 2006 lol

 

[MSnap]

I’ve only seen one other person (not on here) point out that these two games are remarkably similar to Dragon Quest. Even if they don’t play anything close to the same, the spirit is definitely there. I wonder if that has anything to do with the success.

 

[Regulus Tera]

I’ve only seen one other person (not on here) point out that these two games are remarkably similar to Dragon Quest. Even if they don’t play anything close to the same, the spirit is definitely there. I wonder if that has anything to do with the success.

My non-empirical opinion is that Zelda has now supplanted Final Fantasy as the premier fantasy series in Japan. Square Enix has left a hole wide open in the market due to focusing on the global market, and the BotW formula, for whatever reason, perfectly fills it.

 

[LukasManak22]

IIRC Breath of the Wild needed to sell two million copies to break even, so approximately 120M USD. TotK will already have profited from unit sales even if it had double the budget.

BOTW budget can't be estimated, it's the complete miss information that's spread around for multiple years. Here's the Reddit post explaining it. Miyamoto was saying something about 2 million sales figure but it was not even related to BOTW. I would say it's actually impossible to have any real estimate of budget for any EPD project.

 

[Notsowise]

I’ve only seen one other person (not on here) point out that these two games are remarkably similar to Dragon Quest. Even if they don’t play anything close to the same, the spirit is definitely there. I wonder if that has anything to do with the success.

I actually have been thinking that an action 3d DQ would be Zelda with a better story. Even the second character now appears in ToTK.

 

[DarkField]

I’ve only seen one other person (not on here) point out that these two games are remarkably similar to Dragon Quest. Even if they don’t play anything close to the same, the spirit is definitely there. I wonder if that has anything to do with the success.

DQXIS and BTOW definitely share a similar vibe, very comfy and heart warning even in a more serious situation. I think, personally, the vibe comes from the origin of their developers, I mean both are Japanese, and very old sagas of games, they share the tone that set them apart from other RPGs/action games made in other parts of the world, and therefore you can't confuse them with any other game series.

So, tl;dr I agree

 

[meatbag]

@LukasManak22 I see. Thank you for the clarification. In any case, TotK must have turned quite a profit at 10M copies sold.

 

[Kartina]

I’ve only seen one other person (not on here) point out that these two games are remarkably similar to Dragon Quest. Even if they don’t play anything close to the same, the spirit is definitely there. I wonder if that has anything to do with the success.

Having played dq 11 early this year I have to agree, dragon quest really feels like a turn based rpg version of zelda.
Both the way the world works and how both series love to show their weird world completely straight even if they have 2 different ways of being weird.
I would actually love for future zelda games to take more inspiration from dragon quest and the amount of different scenarios they throw at the player.

 

[Marce-chan]

How much would be the budget for a game like this?

It's not really easy to estimate development cost of Nintendo games. The ruler of "100m US$" for AAA games can't be applied to Nintendo games, most of them don't get close to that and some only do near that with marketing included.

Super Smash Bros Ultimate was believed to have reached that cost with its extended development(game + 3 years of DLC), huge team and licensing.

Tears of the Kingdom, though, got a development cycle of 5-6 years and had more people working on it than BotW. I think that game maybe surpassed SSBU budget. Something around 100m $ is my guess. But we really can't be certain without Nintendo informing it, and we can't make easy counts like "600 people x average salary x 60-72 months", because it wasn't anywhere near 600 people working on it at the same time throughout all development, there was the time of pre-production and early production that was likely mostly EPD and Monolith leads and other factors.

 

[fourfourfun]

The Legend of Money: Money of the Kingdom

Money

Would it be as popular if it was called Boney?

 

[Sadist]

Sweet baby Jesus

 

[Machrider]

Its kinda funny that Zelda in Japan has become what Final Fantasy used to be and Final Fantasy in Japan now sells like what Zelda used to in the 90s, lol.

Zelda:

 

[HyahHaHa]

Out of the corner of my eye, the thread title looked like The Legend of Zelda movie and I got really excited for a moment lol.

 

[Mekanos]

Put another way, Japan accounts for about 12% of BotW's total sales, and around 21% of TotK's total sales. That's a 75% increase in the proportion of domestic sales from BotW to TotK.

Damn that's insane. I wonder if social media plays a part in that. Japanese players seem to love showing crazy clips on Twitter.

 

[JoRu]

It's not really easy to estimate development cost of Nintendo games. The ruler of "100m US$" for AAA games can't be applied to Nintendo games, most of them don't get close to that and some only do near that with marketing included.

Super Smash Bros Ultimate was believed to have reached that cost with its extended development(game + 3 years of DLC), huge team and licensing.

Tears of the Kingdom, though, got a development cycle of 5-6 years and had more people working on it than BotW. I think that game maybe surpassed SSBU budget. Something around 100m $ is my guess. But we really can't be certain without Nintendo informing it, and we can't make easy counts like "600 people x average salary x 60-72 months", because it wasn't anywhere near 600 people working on it at the same time throughout all development, there was the time of pre-production and early production that was likely mostly EPD and Monolith leads and other factors.

Agreed. While I'm sure Nintendo themselves have a very good estimate of some kind of development cost, for us it's basically impossible, we have no idea in what way developers have jumped in and out of this project. Looking at some list of credits will not give us that information.

 

[Machrider]

Also Tears Of The Kingdom Looking At Ring Fit's Spot In the Switch Top 10 Sellers:

 

[ILikeFeet]

Also Tears Of The Kingdom Looking At Ring Fit's Spot In the Switch Top 10 Sellers:

Zelda Fit Trainer when?

 

[Deleted member 1896]

Imagine how much it could sell if it wasn't held back by the Switch's hardware?

/s

 

[Ozzie]

Even BBC is reporting this. Zelda is a mainstream IP now and a blockbuster at that.

 

[MisterSpo]

Even BBC is reporting this. Zelda is a mainstream IP now and a blockbuster at that.

They had a special item on Tears of the Kingdom on the main evening news bulletin last Friday, too, describing it as the biggest pop culture event of the year.

 

[Machrider]

They had a special item on Tears of the Kingdom on the main evening news bulletin last Friday, too, describing it as the biggest pop culture event of the year.

Pshaw, that's the Mario movie.

 

[Johna X]

I'm a bit confused about the size and scaling of the Japanese game market reading this... like surely it's smaller then other markets but reading that BOTW only sold 3.5 mil where as rhythm heaven ds sold 2 mil in japan alone like what do games like DQ sell... I swear I'm not trying to just bring up RH, moreso just like to me this would imply games generally sell in the under a mil to 3 mil range in japan, which would make Japanese game sales far more consistent then overall like how much did MK8D sell for another example cause if 40 mil extra copies total means only like 3 mil extra in japan...

 

[ngpdrew]

The best game ever made should probably sell really well.

 

[boodream]

Between Mario movie , and Zelda Totk those two properties generated at least 2 billion dollars in revenue from April 5 and May 12 or just over a 30 days. Not counting back catalog sales from renewed interest in both franchises and resulting hardware sales

However, it's not as if all the money from the film went to Nintendo. It's actually a reason to think that in the future, Nintendo may rely more on its new internal division than on outside partners for its adaptation projects. That said, I'm dubious about the artistic relevance of a Zelda adaptation, in any form whatsoever. But given the size of the license, they're going to do it.

I know the Zelda purists are fuming right now.

The huge success of the new game format clearly says something about the evolution of what a broader audience wants. Like Animal Crossing, the two open world Zelda games are literally games where you can spend your time just hanging out. I'm not saying it's good or bad, but I think it illustrates a real, clear-cut evolution, and I don't think you necessarily have to be a purist to simply not love this kind of radical proposal, which by the way, in addition to being a huge success, is executed brilliantly.

 

[Kingpin722]

So cool to see a AAA release that isn’t primarily marketed with cutting edge visuals or endless multiplayer grinding that you’ll have to pay additionally for, have such a huge impact.

 

[invwar]

It's not really easy to estimate development cost of Nintendo games. The ruler of "100m US$" for AAA games can't be applied to Nintendo games, most of them don't get close to that and some only do near that with marketing included.

Super Smash Bros Ultimate was believed to have reached that cost with its extended development(game + 3 years of DLC), huge team and licensing.

Tears of the Kingdom, though, got a development cycle of 5-6 years and had more people working on it than BotW. I think that game maybe surpassed SSBU budget. Something around 100m $ is my guess. But we really can't be certain without Nintendo informing it, and we can't make easy counts like "600 people x average salary x 60-72 months", because it wasn't anywhere near 600 people working on it at the same time throughout all development, there was the time of pre-production and early production that was likely mostly EPD and Monolith leads and other factors.

The base salary for game developers in Japan is lower as in the US, around 80,000 is already considered good, even in Tokyo. There are 1200 names in the credits, but likely 300 were the peak workforce. This would be worst case 150m USD, which sounds about realistic for a modern AAA product. So a budget of 100-150m can be assumed.

 

[kimbo99]

10Ms is a pretty crazy attach rate, especially this late in the lifecycle of the Switch. I wonder if the engine will be Nintendo's bread and butter for all AAA games moving forward