Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto has reportedly said during Nintendo’s investor Q&A that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild needs to sell over 2 million copies for it to make a profit when it launches next year. Miyamoto’s comments, which were translated by Twitter user Cheesemeister3k (via VideoGamer) reveal that the reason for such a sales target is a combination of a large stuff numbers and a rather long development cycle.
He reportedly said that:
Breath of the Wild has over 100 staff, and over 300 people in the credits, spending over 5 years. Our current efforts will be helpful in the next production. The costs will be recovered by selling in large volumes, passing 2m sales.
A game is a hit in the domestic market if it reaches 300k sales, but we’re targeting worldwide sales.
However, despite the heavy resource investment Nintendo has put into making Breath of The Wild, the company’s GM of entertainment planning and development, Shinya Takahashi, reportedly said that they can utilize various assets created for the new Zelda on other projects in the future.
By using resources made for Zelda on other software we can make many compact titles. The last Brain Training sold a lot with small resources. We’re doing lots of things to reduce development times like reusing game engines.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild is currently scheduled for a 2017 release on Wii U and on the upcoming Nintendo NX. If Link’s next – and possibly greatest – adventure doesn’t sell over 2 million copies, we’ll be amazed.