It takes a certain kind of industry power to set records using the same game twice. According to early estimates, that's exactly what Nintendo has managed with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake, especially in terms of physical sales.
Christopher Dring of The Game Business has some numbers around the redux of Link's time-traveling battle to save Hyrule. Right off the top, the Ocarina of Time remake is the second biggest launch of a Zelda game in Britain in terms of physical copies.
When you consider other top contenders in the original, Majora's Mask, Wind Waker and Breath of the Wild, that's a lot of Switch 2 game cards. Speaking of Breath of the Wild, this first week is looking around 35% higher than the first seven days of Link's jump onto the Switch, and that's across both that system and the WiiU.
The launch has been massive, and Ocarina of Time is the biggest-selling physical game this year, by quite some distance, according to Dring, outstripping Resident Evil Requiem, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, Crimson Desert, and what else you'd like to consider. A solid performance for the return of a game that's nearly 30 years old.
It trails behind Tears of the Kingdom, but that's to be expected. There were a lot of Switch players by the time that game came out, whereas people were buying the first Switch to play Breath of the Wild, raising the barrier to entry. The fact that Ocarina of Time has managed these numbers on a slower-selling machine makes this all the more noteworthy.
Nintendo and nostalgia is a powerful combination. Now we have to see how Link's efforts fare against GTA 6.
