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The story
Based on a Yahoo News article covering Nintendo’s Zelda series, a discussion about how the franchise struggled before Breath of the Wild became a hot topic on 5ch’s gaming (“geha”) board. The article notes that while Twilight Princess sold 8.85 million copies (combined Wii and GameCube), Skyward Sword managed only 3.52 million — a stark contrast to Breath of the Wild’s 34.28 million on Switch. The thread split between posters who called it an exaggeration to describe 3.52 million copies as a “crisis,” and others who recalled already sensing the series’ popularity fading at the time, pointing to Skyward Sword’s controls and story as sore spots — sparking a wider debate over how to rate the game.
According to focus groups (consumer research panels) that Mr. Ellis took part in, the fanbase was gradually shrinking and the series wasn’t pulling in new players. There was plenty of data showing interest fading with each new release, and he looks back on it as “a genuinely dark period.”
This slump shows up in the actual sales figures too. Twilight Princess sold a combined 8.85 million copies across the Wii and GameCube versions (as of the end of September 2015), but no brand-new entry came close to that number again until Breath of the Wild. The original Wii version of Skyward Sword, for instance, managed only 3.52 million copies (as of the end of March 2012).
Seen in that light, it’s easy to appreciate just how big a breakthrough Breath of the Wild’s 34.28 million copies (Switch version, as of the end of September 2026) really was. Series producer Eiji Aonuma said before the official title reveal that the theme was “rethinking what Zelda takes for granted” — perhaps that very sense of crisis was what drove the series to break new ground.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Read the original article here
What people said
Unfortunately, it only survived because people kept buying it.
Then why didn't you buy the Zelda games before Breath of the Wild?
3.52 million and they call that a "crisis," lol.
Classic Tane, just ripping off the take foreigners were already mocking him for on X (Twitter).
Honestly, it's probably still sitting there right now.
>Was "The Legend of Zelda" on the brink of extinction before Breath of the Wild?
Well, that's very Nintendo. They probably coined a new term because they wanted to claim they weren't just jumping on a trend.
But everyone calls it open world anyway, and that just proves even the creators had the same image in mind.
It's just that if you say "open world," you get a bunch of idiots going on about what the definition of "open world" even is.
If it's only impressive, it just ends up as a critics' darling and never actually hits with regular people.
You try to stay afloat in the sky and just keep sinking lower and lower.
I bet a lot of people gave up right around there.
I honestly don't get what's so hard about it, but watching let's-plays and streams, there are people out there struggling like crazy with it.
Mario's just in a league of its own — Zelda still had plenty of presence as a flagship title. Honestly, Kirby was the weirder case: sales never really grew, but somehow everyone knows it.
Yeah, surprisingly, nobody actually finishes those ones.
Ocarina of Time will probably hit 10 million, but how many games on that garbage PS5 have ever sold 10 million?
Actually the opposite — the shared understanding fans had settled into up through Skyward Sword got blown apart by Breath of the Wild. Like how Rito and Zora suddenly coexist.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
The original article is a Yahoo News “expert” piece based on interviews with people connected to Zelda, framing the “crisis” around these numbers: Twilight Princess at 8.85 million (as of September 2015), Skyward Sword at 3.52 million (as of March 2012), and Breath of the Wild at 34.28 million (Switch version, as of September 2026). The thread split over whether 3.52 million copies really deserves to be called a “crisis” — some argued that’s a solid number next to other titles, while others gave more weight to insider accounts describing a flagship series that was clearly underperforming. Opinions on Skyward Sword itself were also divided, with many criticizing the difficulty of the Motion Plus controls and the story, while others countered that it simply came down to players’ lack of skill — there’s no consensus on the game’s actual quality. Also worth noting: the article’s own coinage “open-air” was, at the time, really just another way of saying “open world” — a detail worth keeping in mind when thinking about Zelda’s shift in direction.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware & Industry / “geha”) thread “Tane: “The Legend of Zelda Was on the Brink of Extinction Before Breath of the Wild”.”
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