Japanese gamers are going wild for "Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild," as the game is now the country's most popular title right now.
In fact, "Breath of the Wild" is only second to 1998's "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time" in terms of sales, which no other video game in Japan has matched in popularity at the time of release. This makes "Breath of the Wild" a worthy successor and modern iteration of the "Zelda" franchise, which is quite a tall order given how the game's reputation was similar to that of "Super Mario's".
As of this month, "Breath of the Wild" has sold an impressive 957,752 units in Japan. This is quite a large sales figure considering the game is only exclusive to just two platforms, which is the Nintendo Switch and the Wii U. It is also worth noting that those were just the physical copy sales; the sales of the digital version will certainly add up to that, making the game sales a lot more than just one million copies sold.
For the sake of comparison, "Ocarina of Time" has sold 1.25 million units in Japan since 1998, and this was back before digital versions of video games are available, meaning those are all physical discs. With the addition of new features for the Nintendo Switch, the sales figures are expected to increase even more. This, in turn, will also make the Switch popular and sell more as well, both in and out of Japan.
Fans could argue that this was not surprising given how revolutionary "Breath of the Wild" is since it essentially revolutionized the franchise with the introduction of the sprawling open-world, which was a lot more complex than in any "Zelda" game before, or any other video game for that matter. The game was praised for its landmark open-world design and is even hailed as one of the greatest games of all time.
