While creating an objective list of the best video games of all time is more or less impossible, Nintendo’s long-lived action-adventure series The Legend of Zelda comes up commonly in these conversations. In fact, in 2021, gaming outlet IGN included multiple Zelda games in its all-time top ten, with the recent The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild claiming the number one spot. Proven a massive success by just about every commonly-used industry metric, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild continues to sell well in 2022, and it saw an all-new sales surge in the UK during the first week of April.As relayed by GamesIndustry.biz head Christopher Dring, Nintendo’s 2017 Zelda franchise installment saw a 51% jump in boxed retail in early April, suggesting that the title, which crossed the 25 million total sales mark in December 2021, still has a surprising amount of steam despite Nintendo’s aversion to lowering the prices of its first-party titles. Dring joked that the publisher “might as well just cancel the sequel” given the continued success of the half-decade-old game, though hype for the upcoming second Switch-centric Zelda title could be part of the reason for the sudden sales surge.Hardware sales could be a significant contributing factor in this Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild retail bump; the Switch dominated console sales in 2021 owing partly to the continued shortage of other ninth-gen consoles. Given the game’s notoriety, it seems like a must-buy for new Switch players despite the unwavering premium price point.
Oddly enough, another factor in the title’s continued success could be the recent debut of From Software’s Elden Ring. While the two games, at a glance, seem to be very different, and Elden RIng isn’t even available on the Switch, they are very often compared to one another owing to their unique open-world design philosophies. Elden Ring and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild's Sequel were two of the most discussed forthcoming games of 2021, and it could be that the overwhelming success of one series inadvertently boosted the other.
Nintendo hasn’t exactly been forthcoming about the ETA of the next entry in its storied The Legend of Zelda series. In fact, fans have only been made privy to a selection of brief trailers which only served to mystify those excited about the title, and the publisher has even been so cagey as to keep the game’s full title a secret. Unfortunately, due to the recent cancellation of the E3 2022 conference, it’s hard to say when more information will be relayed to the public, and perhaps, in lieu of anything new, new Switch owners are settling for the 2017 game.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is available now for the Nintendo Switch.
