Does Nintendo Care About the Legend of Zelda?
The Blind Eternities forum
Posted on Jan. 25, 2021, 4:55 p.m. by DemonDragonJ
The Legend of Zelda is one of the most famous and influential video games franchises of all time, and is certainly very profitable for Nintendo, but I wonder how much Nintendo truly cares about that franchise, given their apparent disregard for it.
Nintendo never misses an opportunity to celebrate major anniversaries in the Mario franchise, as clearly demonstrated with last year’s celebration of the 35th anniversary of that franchise, but I am worried that Nintendo shall allow the 35th anniversary of LoZ to pass with relatively little fanfare, since they seem to be giving more attention to Pokemon’s 25th anniversary, and they did the same thing, five years ago, where they gave more attention to Pokemon’s 20th anniversary than they did to LoZ’s 30th anniversary, despite LoZ being an older and (in my mind) much more epic franchise.
What does everyone else say about this? Does Nintendo care about The Legend of Zelda? If so, why are they giving it so little attention compared to Mario and Pokemon?
Nintendo is a business, that ultimately cares about profits, and LoZ is an extremely popular flagship franchise for them. They definitely care about it, and as RiotRunner789 already pointed out, they are hardly neglecting the series with regular releases and remasters.
So maybe the mass marketing around Pokemon hits demographics in such a way as it is seen to be more profitable to focus on Pokemon for the anniversary.
January 25, 2021 8:22 p.m.
Pokemon is the highest grossing media franchise of all time. Estimated worth of 77.9 Billion USD about 7.4 Billion comes from the video games. Ledgen of zelda is worth around 1.4 Billion USD as much as it stinks for zelda fans it just makes more sense to celebrate pokemon's anniversary
January 25, 2021 8:53 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #5
shadow63, why is Pokemon more popular than is LoZ? What does it have LoZ does not?
January 25, 2021 8:58 p.m.
68 Billon USD in licensed merchandise. If it exist pokemon has been plastered on it.
January 25, 2021 9:11 p.m.
Mario is Nintendo's flagship character and as mentioned previously Pokemon is the highest grossing media franchise ever.
The actual anniversary is still about a month away so there is still time for something to be released via Switch. It's likely you'll see something released only in the week or two leading up to the date. There are also other franchise's with 35th anniversaries to consider. Should Castlevania or Metroid also get some kind of blowout via Nintendo for hitting the big 3-5?
January 26, 2021 11:14 a.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #8
FSims81, yes, I would appreciate that, very much, since those franchises do not receive nearly as much attention as they deserve, in my mind.
shadow63, popularity does not automatically equal quality, so I shall hold fast to my preferences for franchises that I feel are more worthy of praise and veneration.
RiotRunner789 says... #2
They care by evidence of a stream of high quality new Zelda games every couple years.
On specifically anniversaries, maybe? It could just be a committee of people headed by Mario fans.
I would pay attention to what games (new/remakes/remasters) we get and use that to judge if they care.
January 25, 2021 5:14 p.m.