Interest in The Legend of Zelda was “getting smaller and smaller” before Breath of the Wild, according to former Nintendo marketing leads
“They had to do something dramatic.”
The Legend of Zelda was in “dire straits” before Breath of the Wild gave the beloved series a massive second wind, according to two former Nintendo marketing leads.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time‘s most recent remake has been a mega success, becoming the fastest-selling Switch 2 game so far, but the shiny new adventure has also prompted some online debate over where the series should go next. Should Zelda lean into its carefully directed history – like the one brilliantly remade in Ocarina of Time – or keep the ball rolling with Breath of the Wild’s wide open, spontaneous sandbox?
Nintendo of America‘s ex-director of social media marketing Kit Ellis and former public relations manager Krysta Yang chimed in on the discourse in their latest podcast (below), and explained that Zelda wasn’t doing too hot before the Switch era.
“There has been some revisionist history out there lately,” Ellis said in response to fans who reckon “the Zelda team ripped away” series staples, like classic dungeons and linear worlds, at the height of their popularity.
“I remember, I was going to the focus groups where it was a really dark moment,” Ellis continued. “The feedback was like, ‘The fan base is dwindling. This is not bringing in new players.'”
The Legend of Zelda was supposedly “shrinking,” while “interest in the audience was getting smaller and smaller” with each new entry. “They had to do something dramatic,” Ellis said.
“This series was in dire straits. They were selling, like, nothing,” Yang added.
The Zelda series was certainly never irrelevant, but there’s a pretty big gap between the roughly 8m copies Twilight Princess sold at the beginning of the Wii generation, the roughly 3m copies Skyward Sword sold at the end of the console’s life, and the 34m copies that Breath of the Wild sold just one console generation later.
It was a success so big it spawned a wildly ambitious sequel, Tears of the Kingdom, and even influenced the latest 2D Zelda, Echoes of Wisdom. Now that classic Zelda’s back in the spotlight, though, I do hope Nintendo’s able to slot the series’ curated dungeons into whatever the next mainline game becomes.
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