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Legend of Zelda game sells 10M copies in three days

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Re: Legend of Zelda game sells 10M copies in three days

#381

Post by bananapub »

bspammer wrote: post #271
byby wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The game is that good. But holistically speaking the GP is right. Nintendo's success as a company is due in major part to it's up and marketing.

I’m kind of amazed that Nintendo continues to put as much effort into their first party games as they do. They could probably get away with phoning it in and releasing a crappy mainline Zelda/Mario game annually, because as you say their marketing is so strong. Instead they take 6 years to make an excellent sequel. Every Pokémon game seems to be worse than the last, and every single one breaks sales records. I’m very…

why is it amazing? they take pride in their work and seemingly intend to continue doing a good job for another fifty years. more companies should copy that rather than "oh yeah marketing blitz".

Re: Legend of Zelda game sells 10M copies in three days

#382

Post by bananapub »

adamesque wrote: post #19
hospitalJail wrote: post #5

The marketing was insane as usual. Nintendo performed excellent. Multiple front page reddit posts, multiple 10/10 reviews from big name outlets. Nintendo rivals Apple as the best company in marketing. Nintendo has done some sort of mass psychology that allows them to have sub 30fps with no complaints, I was born too early to see this reviewed in business schools, but we are starting to see a bit of the innerworkings…

It’s really tempting to see the success of something you don’t understand or value as “marketing” or “mass psychology” but I suspect that path doesn’t usually lead to any interesting or useful insight.

well put. it really is fascinating to see how common that is on HN, where I imagine most of the posters imagine themselves to be worldly and open-minded, see for example every iphone thread.

Re: Legend of Zelda game sells 10M copies in three days

#383

Post by m3kw9 »

ggregoire wrote: post #353

I wonder what would be those sales if the game was released on PC too. Like they obviously make it exclusive to the Switch to sell more consoles. But I'll never buy that console (or any console, really) just to play this game, or even to play 10 games as good as this one. I imagine tons of PC gamers are in my case. I heard the game runs quite well on a Switch emulator and it was getting massively downloaded via torre…

It’s a business strategy that works to have exclusives on a hardware. It sells the hardware and it keeps them in their ecosystem. There are a few percent that won’t buy but they are not going to go after you just to blow up their entire business model

Re: Legend of Zelda game sells 10M copies in three days

#384

Post by waboremo »

kettlecorn wrote: post #187

I'm often discouraged by comments on Hacker News that downplay the importance of great design in a design-heavy medium. This game isn't succeeding primarily because of great marketing, franchise, or blind loyalty to Nintendo (though all of those help!). It's succeeding primarily because it's the follow-up to a game that critics and players universally found enormously fun. Before Breath of the Wild previous Zelda ent…

BOTW has the same attachment rate as Windwaker and Ocarina of Time, which nullifies the argument that Zelda has sold poorly until BOTW. Attachment rates are important, better than pure sales, because it tells you how many potential buyers bought the game.

BOTW and TOTK are still huge successes, but it's not really about great design (unfortunately). If it was, every one of Nintendo's games would be record smashing sellers, but they aren't. They have plenty of games that don't make a dent despite their insane attention to detail. We saw this with Mario Maker 1 & 2, not even cracking 10m copies to this day, and one can't even blame lack of name recognition, it's literally Mario!

Where great design does have impact is on long term word of mouth sales. Which we saw with BOTW and are likely to see here again.

Re: Legend of Zelda game sells 10M copies in three days

#385

Post by m3kw9 »

taeric wrote: post #142

I love how every top level comment is all about how this is because Nintendo made an amazing game. Yet... with how fast this is selling, there is literally no way that folks know it is an amazing game ahead of time. More, odds are high that if they had made this as not a sequel, it would not be selling as well. Go bolder and make it a new franchise? Same game would basically not be noticed. I think it is fair to like…

Stating the obvious, yes being a sequels helps, and not leveraging a sequel and be bold just for the heck of it is pointless. Also a sequel that sucked and get 65% reviews won’t get you these numbers

Re: Legend of Zelda game sells 10M copies in three days

#386

Post by dragontamer »

bspammer wrote: post #271
byby wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The game is that good. But holistically speaking the GP is right. Nintendo's success as a company is due in major part to it's up and marketing.

I’m kind of amazed that Nintendo continues to put as much effort into their first party games as they do. They could probably get away with phoning it in and releasing a crappy mainline Zelda/Mario game annually, because as you say their marketing is so strong. Instead they take 6 years to make an excellent sequel. Every Pokémon game seems to be worse than the last, and every single one breaks sales records. I’m very…

> Every Pokémon game seems to be worse than the last

You don't get the Pokemon community then.

Each generation of Pokemon fixes the meta. The overwhelming Dragon-meta that was in Diamond/Pearl was fixed by Fairy Types by X/Y (which also improved the weakest Diamond/Pearl type: Poison by making Poison strong vs Fairy). The difficult "breeding" mechanics as the community learned to use (and abuse) IVs was fixed by adding in NPCs that helped figure out IVs, and items (Destiny Knot) to figure that out. Then Bottlecaps and Mints were added to make other details easier. Etc. etc.

As Toxic-Spikes/Spikes/Stealth Rock teams grew more powerful in a stall environment, the Pokemon Team added Mega-evolutions and other powerful mechanics to sweep / push the game back into an offensive style, rather than degenerating into a defensive stallfest.

Every generation of Pokemon makes it easier-and-easier to build a competitive team and join the online competitive community. Every generation the Pokemon team demonstrates an understanding of the online competitive meta.

And even recently, the Pokemon Anime has acknowledged what the community has figured out. Gengar / Dragonite are powerful and popular, and in the show are part of Ash's championship team. Ash's opponents used similarly "competitive" Pokemon, showing that the anime-writers are paying attention to the in-game meta and online competitive environments.

-------

Its a holistic experience. The game designers are responsive to the community, and seem to have leeway into acknowledging the community experience inside of the show.

That's more or less what people want. Game designers that acknowledge the community and tailor the game for the community. Yes, Pokemon isn't too mainstream, its not like Legend of Zelda or Skyrim. Its... its own thing. There is a large amount of children playing who remain happily ignorant to the subtle details of the metagame. But there's also a large amount of adults who have played Pokemon for the last 20+ years, and its kind of awesome that the Pokemon company remains responsive to these subtle metagame issues / high-competitive metagame issues.

Nintendo (and the Pokemon Company) aren't afraid to cater to the needs of the community its built up. They actually cultivate it and help it grow.

----------

If you're not the type to understand why a few weekends ago the 5x perfect IV Ditto raid-boss was such a big deal, Pokemon probably isn't for you.

Re: Legend of Zelda game sells 10M copies in three days

#387

Post by earthling8118 »

byby wrote: post #264
giraffe_lady wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the control schemes drag it back down into the quagmire of unplayable mess despite all that work. An excellent example of the broader point about development focus.

I played on PC. Mouse and keyboard. The controls were excellent.

We're just not going to agree on that. I don't think it's a good game and a lot of it comes down to controls, but it isn't just that.

Re: Legend of Zelda game sells 10M copies in three days

#388

Post by bluefirebrand »

giobox wrote: post #357
mrguyorama wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really that impressive that focusing on game design results in a better game than spending a billion dollars on a thousand artists so that every tree can have ten times as many polygons and each texture is 16kX16k? Better graphics rarely actually IMPROVE a game, and can do nothing to fix a game that was designed poorly. AAA studios whine and cry about how expensive games are to make (completely glossing over th…

> not play the exact game they bought a decade ago with more detailed scenes, and more detail doesn't make a game better Except in the case of this Zelda sequel you sort of are playing the exact same game you bought 5 years ago, and with little/no improvement to detail, for an even higher price (69.99)... While I've bought it and am enjoying it, its hardly some huge shift in any way (technical, gameplay or story) fro…

> While I've bought it and am enjoying it, its hardly some huge shift in any way (technical, gameplay or story)

You have got to be kidding.

The ability to build machines by connecting basically anything to anything is a very impressive mechanic both from a gameplay perspective and from a technical perspective. The fact that they built this to run this nicely on an 8 year old tablet is frankly incredible.

The fact you can jump from the sky and dive to the underworld without pause is impressive as heck too.

Even the little ability to jump through a ceiling to travel upwards to the nearest place to stand is incredible, considering you can do it anywhere that has a ceiling in range. That mechanic is honestly mind blowing from a technical perspective imo.

Re: Legend of Zelda game sells 10M copies in three days

#389

Post by kettlecorn »

cheald wrote: post #366
kettlecorn wrote: post #187

I'm often discouraged by comments on Hacker News that downplay the importance of great design in a design-heavy medium. This game isn't succeeding primarily because of great marketing, franchise, or blind loyalty to Nintendo (though all of those help!). It's succeeding primarily because it's the follow-up to a game that critics and players universally found enormously fun. Before Breath of the Wild previous Zelda ent…

I disagree; Zelda games have always been a major draw for Nintendo audiences. Link to the Past was the best-selling game of 1991; Link's Awakening - released in 1993 on the Gameboy - was a defining game for Nintendo at the time and was directly responsible for a massive uptake in Gameboy sales (and was the best-selling game of the year.) OoT was an absolutely industry-defining success; it was the best-selling game of…

My point is that it's the strength of the design, not the loyalty to the franchise or other factors, that is the primary driver of sales.

The titles you cite (Link's Awakening, Ocarina of Time) also made sales records because they were so good they reached a wider audience. But if you look at historical sales a mainline Zelda entry usually sells 6m to 10m.

Breath of the Wild sold 30 million and Tears of the Kingdom looks to be on a similar trajectory. That's due to the strength of the game design that's broadened the appeal well beyond the typical Zelda gamer.

Re: Legend of Zelda game sells 10M copies in three days

#390

Post by conor_f »

underdeserver wrote: post #351
eru wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even seven years ago the hardware was already quite underpowered, and only really made sense because it's a hybrid console. Yes, the game looks good. They also seem to have fixed some issues compared to BotW, eg the pop-in of objects isn't as jarring.

Why is every one saying seven years ago? I remember the Switch coming out around March 2017. We're in May 2023. That's six years (and change) ago, not seven.

I presume it's related to how old the components are, not necessarily the console hardware itself. Seems like the main chip was released first in 2015
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