Former Nintendo of America marketing leads Kit and Krysta have stated in a new video that the acclaimed The Legend of Zelda series was struggling before the release of the iconic The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Sales were not at the point that the Kyoto-based company expected and focus group testing showed that the fan base was dwindling and that the series was ultimately not bringing in new players. Here’s what was said:
Krysta: “The series was in like dire straits. They were selling like nothing.”
Kit: “Yeah, I remember I was going to the focus groups. It was a really dark moment of like, the feedback is the fan base is dwindling, this is not bringing in new players. We had so much data of like every game, it was like fewer, the interest in the audience was getting smaller and smaller. They had to do something drastic.”
Triforce Heroes wasn’t pushing units.
That’s dumb. They should have known that Zelda fans love to complain about the latest game but still buy it and often like it in retrospect. Focus groups couldn’t have been that reliable. And if you had given what most fans wanted during that time (a game that looked like the Wii U tech demo), the sales numbers still would have been relatively low because of the Wii U install base. I mean, BOTW wouldn’t have blown up if it wasn’t also a launch title for Switch.