So I was involved in a discussion in a thread at Zelda Universe where Twilight Princess' sales numbers kept coming up. Twilight Princess is, for those who are unaware, one of the best selling Zelda games of all time. This was being used as proof that it was more popular than the Wind Waker, which sold significantly fewer copies. Which, strictly speaking, is true.
But when comparing games sales, context matters. How much did the console sell? What is the percentage of the console owners that have the game? What are the percentage of gamers that own the game? How do we go beyond just measuring sales, and measure presence and impact within the overall video game culture? I don't have answers to these, but I do have access to lots of interesting data and an excel spreadsheet, so I dug a little deeper. I grabbed sales numbers for the individual games and the consoles. Based on total sales of the consoles, and the competing consoles in the various generations, I got a very rough estimate of the total number of console gamers worldwide. I also grabbed world population statistics, for good measure, although that's less relevant.
Anyways, I have used this data to build a number of rankings to share with you all! Pending more thorough research I'll likely turn this into an article for some site or another, but it's worth sharing now in this rough shape because I find it super interesting. Originally I shared this at ZU, but I figured many of you would be interested, too.
Top Selling Zelda games, by unit sold (in millions):
- Note that when measuring games that had rereleases or remakes, I've created a "Total" line that combines them. This number is nice to know, but probably includes a lot of repeat buyers.
- I do not think that this includes the GBA remakes of Zelda 1 or 2, or any of the virtual console releases.
- The other lists are based on these numbers, so any errors here are also in the other lists.
- I was shocked at how well Link's Awakening did. I shouldn'tbe though - the original Gameboy/GBC sold super duper well, and it was far and away the best game on the console, other than perhaps Pokemon.
- Note that Link's Crossbow Training outsold over half of the other games in the series, including things like The Wind Waker.
Top Selling Zelda games, as a percentage of the people that owned the console it was released on:
- Excludes "Totals" that cross multiple console generations, like Ocarina of Time, A Link to the Past, and Twilight Princess.
- Excludes the newest games, because it's all in flux and reliable numbers are hard to find.
- Interesting that Ocarina of Time and The Wind Waker are more than twice as high as everything below them. I think it's safe to say that, when measuring penetration amongst Nintendo fans at the time of release, these two games are at the top of the list by far.
- Handhelds seem to do poorly in this category. I think it's because there are typically larger numbers of handhelds sold, but the Zelda sales don't scale up relative to that.
Top Selling Zelda games, by percent of total console gamers that own the game :
- The "total console gamers" are based on the sales numbers of the console in question, added together with the sales numbers of the competing consoles. These are very rough numbers - for instance, they assume that everybody owned just one console, which obviously wasn't true.
- Excludes "Totals" that cross multiple console generations, like Ocarina of Time, A Link to the Past, and Twilight Princess.
- Consoles and handhelds are treated as entirely separate categories when coming up with these totals.
- Excludes the newest games, because it's all in flux and reliable numbers are hard to find.
- This category is interesting because it can be read as data about how popular/impactful Zelda is on gaming culture in general, across all competing platforms.
- Not surprising that the Legend of Zelda tops this list. This essentially means that about 1 in 13 gamers at the time owned it. That's the highest penetration a single Zelda game has ever had into the overall gamer culture. Seems surprisingly low, doesn't it?
- Handhelds do very well here. I think it's because Nintendo has always ruled the handheld market pretty handily.
- You can see clear shifts whenever major competitors enter the console market: Sega with the Genesis to compete with the SNES, Sony with the Playstation to compete with the N64, Microsoft with the Xbox to compete with the Gamecube.
Top Selling Zelda games, by percent of world population that owns the game:
- Excludes "Totals" that cross multiple console generations, like Ocarina of Time, A Link to the Past, and Twilight Princess.
- This list is very high-concept, really, but it's interesting nonetheless. Take the total world populations at the time, and compare them to the copies of Zelda games sold... and you can see what percentage of the world's population has owned that game. Roughly.
- Link's Awakening at the top? Interesting. There must have been a population boom between LA and Ocarina of Time.
- Roughly 1 in every 750 people worldwide owned Link's Awakening. That's the highest it got.
Sources:
Note the wikipedia pages. That's one of the reasons I say these numbers are rough, and don't necessarily take them as gospel: I haven't really verified any of them. Some are a bit questionable, like the fact that both Ages and Seasons supposedly sold roughly identical amounts... which I don't really believe.
Console sales numbers:
Game sales numbers:
World Population by year:
