Breath Of The Wild Is Officially The Best-Selling Zelda Game Ever
Well, sort of.
Game-changing open-world masterpiece, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, has become the highest-selling title in the long-running franchise, Nintendo have revealed - but only when remakes are excluded from figures.
The title has shifted a mammoth 9.98 million copies, with the Switch version accounting for 8.48 million of those. Nintendo's latest console has already made its way into over 15 million homes, over half of which have understandably snapped up its most stellar launch game.
The figure sneaks Breath of the Wild ahead of Twilight Princess as the record-holder for best-selling Zelda game ever. Though 2006's moody romp wasn't the finest entry in the series, it did have a wolf in it. Perhaps more significantly, it was enormously bolstered by the stupendous sales of the Wii, only for grannies everywhere to realise it was more involving than a faint simulation of ten-pin bowling.
BOTW's success marks a big return to form for the series. Skyward Sword, the Wii's second Zelda outing, only sold half as many copies as its predecessor, something not aided by necessitating a special peripheral to swing your sword straight. In as much as BOTW's sales have been helped by the runaway popularity of Nintendo's latest hardware, its universal critical acclaim has doubtlessly proved a major factor, with many reputed outlets citing it as one of the greatest games ever made.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a game about a long-eared spiderboy who climbs mountains to find little treemen who give him seeds. It's well good.