[nmfisher]

Every single Nintendo console I've owned has basically been a very expensive Zelda machine. In a hypothetical world where Sony/Microsoft/someone else acquired the rights to Zelda, I'd expect Switch sales to be at least 50% lower. The incredible strength of their first-party titles is why Nintendo can get away with underpowered hardware, shoddy controllers, crappy software and a big whopping Nintendo tax.

[2muchcoffeeman]

I always wonder why hardware matters. Look at the retro game market. I’ve spent more money lately re-buying old games than new ones. BOTW looks spectacular simply because of artistic choices. And I quickly racked up far more hours on my Switch than my XBOne simply because I could play on the TV, pull it out of the dock and play on the go and never had to turn it off. It just slept. Booting up a console is so archaic. And for what? Graphics that I tuned out eventually?

Which is not to say good graphics are bad. But there’s certainly diminishing returns. After a point it sure as hell isn’t giving me more entertainment value running a space heater.

[iso1210]

There's been over 100 million switches sold and 26 million copies of Zelda. Even if every single person that bought Zelda would have not bought a Switch, that would still put over 75 million switches sold.

Even the best selling game - Mariocart - is on fewer than half of the consoles.

[hackinthebochs]

Momentum has a lot to do with whether third parties invest in your console. The fact that BoTW pushed console sales early on gave third parties incentive to develop content for it, which then allowed the buy rate to be sustained past the boost BoTW gave it. So the fact that only a quarter of the consoles are bought with/for BoTW, its importance to the consoles success is much greater than the buy ratio would suggest.

[fullstop]

I don't know if this holds true for BOTW, but historically Zelda has not sold well in Japan despite its success in Western markets.

[iso1210]

I don't do games much - I've got KSP and Civ 6 on my desktop, and we had a Wii, and now a Switch.

The killer games on both Wii and especially Switch are the Lego ones.

I've not heard of Zelda before.

[yucky]

>I've not heard of Zelda before.

This is such a fascinating statement from anybody, regardless of how often you game.

[iso1210]

I think it shows the kind of world difference between 'gamers' and 'people who buy switch'. There's clearly some overlap, but Switch (and Wii before that) appeals to non-gamers in a way people in the gaming bubble can't comprehend.

[yucky]

I was more referring to the fact that my grandma who has never played a video game in her life, has still heard of Mario. Zelda has been around almost as long, and is almost as culturally relevant to non-gamers. Or Pokemon. Or Donkey King. This is culturally significant IP we're talking about, gamer or not.

[fullstop]

Not really. Since 1986 there have been literally dozens of Zelda titles released. This would be equivalent to someone saying that they had never heard of Star Wars or Microsoft Office.