It seems players were simply dying to get back to Hyrule. Nintendo has revealed that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has sold 10 million copies in three days. This now puts it as the fastest-selling game in the franchise’s history, not to mention it has already sold one-third of the number of copies that Breath of the Wild did over the past six years.
In a press release to Business Wire, Nintendo of America’s Executive Vice President of Sales, Marketing, and Communications Devon Pritchard said:
Many players are returning to Hyrule with all its new mysteries and possibilities, and with the record-breaking launch of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for Nintendo Switch, we can’t wait to see what they’ll create in the game and the stories they’ll share next.
Devon Pritchard, Nintendo
It’s a truly stunning result, not because Zelda wasn’t popular but because of how explosively popular it has become.
Further breaking down the statistics, four million copies alone were sold in the Americas, and about 2.4 million were sold in Japan. The remaining 3+ million were spread out across the world, though it’s safe to say that pretty much every country has Zelda fever right now. With an MSRP of $69.99, Tears of the Kingdom is also likely to become the most profitable title in the series, even if it doesn’t match Breath of the Wild’s lifetime sales.
It’s still far too early to even speculate what might come next, but now we know for certain that Nintendo won’t be giving up this open-world style for the franchise soon. Series producer Eiji Aonuma stated in a recent interview with Game Informer that it would continue to develop in this style for the foreseeable future. It’s not hard to see why. When you can shift 10 million copies in a single weekend, why would you give that up?
