According to Media Create, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has sold one million units in Japan. While this may not seem like a big deal, but it actually is. Breath of the Wild is the first Zelda game to surpass one million units since Ocarina of Time, which was 20 years ago. The Switch version sold 871,528 units while the Wii U version accumulated 133,024 units. The Wii U version numbers haven’t been updated lately so it’s possible that the numbers are higher. To put this all in perspective, here’s a graph of all the Zelda games.
Surprisingly, Phantom Hourglass, of every Zelda games you could choose from, came closest to one million. It seems like the portable games were the ones that actually saved the series in Japan. Japan has moved much more to a portable market, which probably had some influence on the development of the Switch. Still, hitting the one million mark? That is quite an accomplishment for the island of Japan. It may be home to some of the most prestigious gaming companies in the world, but, it’s a rather small market and Zelda is much more popular in the west.
This ensures that we will definitely see more Zelda in the future.