Tears of the Kingdom – Sales Have Stagnated

Today Nintendo has released their earnings release for the fiscal year ending March 2024. And while the Nintendo Switch is still doing quite well for its old age, there is one number in in this report that has stood out to me, in comparison to the last one.

At the end of 2023, Nintendo had shipped 20.28 million units of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which was absolutely impressive at the time. But three months later, this number hasn't increased by much, only by 330.000 copies to be exact, to 20.61 million. Here it shows that Tears of the Kingdom likely won't become the same evergreen that Breath of the Wild was, where the game kept selling for years, even to this date.

But it wasn't necessarily meant to be. It was meant to be one of the last big Nintendo Switch games and as such it has created new records for the Zelda series, with 20 million in its first year. That's tremendous and more than twice as much as any other Zelda game that came before Breath of the Wild.

Tears of the Kingdom also hasn't gotten the same post-release exposure as Breath of the Wild. Effectively, we got two amiibo and an artwork, that was it. Oh, and the latest GDC presentations (which I have yet to watch). This was partly by design and even noble, because it shipped as a full package, with no DLC or major updates coming later. But the game also wasn't showered in awards, since it wasn't as ground-breaking, and it overall wasn't able to stay in the media as much. At least, it looks like Nintendo is going to announce a soundtrack in Japan for its first anniversary (source), so there will be something, but it's certainly no Master Mode.

In addition, you have to consider that not everyone who has purchased Breath of the Wild will also have immediate interest in its sequel. There are those who were dissatisfied with the first title and there are those who are still busy playing it. This may be anecdotal, but I have two colleagues at work for whom the latter is true. And eventually they may adopt Tears of the Kingdom later on, once they are finished with exploring the Hyrule of Breath of the Wild... There is no rush.

So, the game will still keep selling, just not at the same rate as its predecessor. And with the nature of it being a sequel, it will likely also not surpass those sales of over 30 million. But with that in mind, Tears of the Kingdom was already a huge success and further cements this new open world direction for the series, which started with Breath of the Wild.