The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom units sold worldwide 2024
Released on May 12, 2023, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is the highly anticipated follow-up to the 2017 critical hit The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. An exclusive release for Nintendo's Switch console, the action-adventure game sold ten million units worldwide in its first three days, 2.24 million of which were sold in the game's domestic market Japan. Total lifetime sales of Zelda: TotK stood at 21.04 million as of September 2024.
The Legend of Zelda
First released in 1986, The Legend of Zelda is one of the most popular and enduring video games series of all time, with over 130 million unit sales in total . The series centers on the various incarnations of the protagonist Link and Princess Zelda of Hyrule as they fight the main antagonist, Ganon, who attempts to conquer Hyrule and/or the world. Every generation of Nintendo consoles has featured the release of a Zelda game, and many gaming industry veterans have cited the games as highly influential to them.
Up until now, ToTK’s predecessor, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, still holds the top spot as the best-selling Zelda title, with over 30 million unit sales. Breath of the Wild was a launch title for the then newly released Nintendo Switch console. Will Tears of the Kingdom be able to claim the crown of the new top-selling Zelda games?
Highly anticipated video game releases in 2023
Overall, 2023 had been a good year for major video game releases. For comparison, multi-platform billion-dollar seller Hogwarts Legacy (released in February 2023) took two weeks to sell about 12 million copies and Tears of the Kingdom is likely to eclipse Hogwarts' sales in due time.
In June 2023, Diablo 4, the fourth main installment in the Diablo series, was released by Activision Blizzard over a decade after the previous mainline title, Diablo 3. A financial success, Diablo IV generated about 666 U.S. dollars in sales in five days . Another long-anticipated follow-up release of a major video game series was Baldur’s Gate 3 (developed and published by Larian Studios) – fans of the series had to wait over 20 years for a new title in the RPG gaming series, and BG3, developed by a smaller studio than the original releases, was a well-received hit on release. Following a spring and summer of blockbuster games, Bethesda Game Studios released its PC and Xbox platform exclusive open world action adventure Starfield in September 2023. The game is Bethesda’s first new IP in a quarter of a century and generated more than 1 million players on launch day.
