The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild unit sales worldwide 2017-2024
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is an action-adventure game published by Nintendo. Part of the hugely popular Zelda franchise of video games, BotW has accumulated over 32.62 million unit sales as of December 2024. The game is one of the top-selling Nintendo Switch game titles worldwide. Breath of the Wild was released on March 3, 2017, as a launch game for the Switch and the final Nintendo game for the Wii U console.
The success of Breath of the Wild
The release of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was a huge critical and commercial success. With a total of over 33.5 million unit sales (combined Switch and Wii U versions), BotW is currently the best-selling Legend of Zelda title of all time, ahead of Nintendo 64 fan-favorite Ocarina of Time. Breath of the Wild has broken several game launch records for its publisher Nintendo and won multiple Game of the Year awards from various outlets and organizations. Most notably, BotW won Game of the Year and three other awards at The Game Awards 2017, as well as Game of the Year at the 21st Annual D.I.C.E. Awards in February 2018.
The popularity of open world action-adventure games
Breath of the Wild is an action-adventure title where players explore an open world with plenty of room for experimentation with sandbox and gameplay mechanics. In a 2024 survey, action-adventure games were the second-most popular gaming genre among console gamers.
Open world settings have been popular with major RPG and action-adventure titles, as they allow players to explore their in-game environment in a non-linear way with many ways to reach their objective. Initially, some points of the map and gameplay are often locked until the player passes a certain narrative point. Additionally, Breath of the Wild features gameplay mechanics where players can use certain skills to solve puzzles in multiple ways. This approach, where players are given tools to come up with their own creative solutions to objectives, is called sandbox gameplay.
