Zelda was struggling to attract new players before Breath of the Wild changed its direction, according to former Nintendo of America employees Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang. The pair recall internal audience research that painted a troubling picture of the series.
Speaking on the November 12 episode of their podcast, Yang described the series as being in “dire straits.” Ellis recalled attending focus groups where the feedback was that “the fan base is dwindling” and “This is not bringing in new players.”
Ellis recalled focus-group feedback and internal research indicating declining interest, and argued that the company needed a dramatic change. The remarks, highlighted by Genki, came during a discussion about whether future Zelda games should return to a classic structure or combine open-world exploration with more traditional dungeons.
The pair linked that recollection to their views on Nintendo’s change in direction, while discussing what future games could borrow from older entries. Both hosts entertained the appeal of another traditional-style Zelda adventure during the conversation.
Breath of the Wild Became a Switch Bestseller
Nintendo presented Breath of the Wild as a deliberate break with series conventions, giving players greater freedom to explore and tackle its world.
Nintendo’s Switch software sales figures list 34.28 million copies of Breath of the Wild as of September 30, 2026. That figure covers the Switch version.
The design ambitions also predate the finished game’s open world. As covered in our report on Skyward Sword’s hardware constraints, the series had already been wrestling with how much freedom it could offer. Fujibayashi recalled wanting freer climbing and seamless travel from sky to ground before the hardware could support those ideas. Those design ambitions give the current discussion another dimension: some of the ideas associated with open-world Zelda grew out of its more tightly directed adventures.
Official Breath of the Wild artwork: Nintendo.
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