After six years of waiting, video game lovers can get, as of Friday, the latest version of the game “The Legend of Zelda” created by “Nintendo”, which is counting on the enthusiasm of this video game to raise sales of its own console. Switch”.
The new release, titled “Tears of the Kingdom”, has been captivating video game fans for several months, with clips showing footage of it receiving millions of views online.
Japanese players, who took advantage of the time difference, were the first to buy the game on Friday, like Yutaka Hirai, 30, who waited in the morning in a line of dozens of people in front of an electronics store in Tokyo.
“I hope to find in this new game vast areas of exploration and adventure that existed in the previous version,” the real estate employee told AFP.
Kawakami, 32, downloaded the game before she went to bed so she could try it out the next day before she went to work. “I was really excited to start the adventure and will be playing with it all weekend,” she says.
“I feel crazy”
In other countries, some stores decided to open their doors at midnight to attract video game fans, and more than 150 people gathered at night in front of a store in Paris.
“I feel crazy because the game has been waiting for six years,” said 19-year-old student Taylor Meghera. For her part, 18-year-old Emily Sastre said, “The Zelda series of games has accompanied me throughout my childhood until today.”
Shigeru Miyamoto, a Japanese game designer who created many characters, most notably Mario and Dinky Kong, created The Legend of Zelda, which focuses on adventure and exploration in 1986.
A total of about 125 million copies were sold worldwide, while the game inspired generations of gamers and game makers.
“It’s hard to describe what makes Zelda so special,” Katsuhiko Hayashi, editor-in-chief of Japanese magazine Famitsu, told AFP.
He pointed to the game’s “puzzles to be solved, action elements and a world of its own”.
“Best sales in history”
At the beginning of 2010, “Zelda” suffered from a crisis represented in the repetition of its episodes, which prompted “Nintendo” to reconsider the series with the introduction of new elements that restored the movement to it.
This resulted in the launch in 2017 of a version of the series entitled “Breath of the Wild” in conjunction with the launch of the “Switch” console, and this version became the best-selling game series of all time (29 million copies).
Hayashi considered, “This game raised the level of challenge among games that belong to the genre of adventure and action, and Zelda is still at the forefront of these games.”
And “Nintendo” is counting on “Tears of the Kingdom” to support its activity for the fiscal year 2023-2024, which began in April, and the Japanese group’s expectations indicate a significant decline in sales of “Switch”, which was launched seven years ago, with 15 million copies sold ( -16.5%.
And the analyst at “Kantan Games” Serkan Toto pointed out that the new version of the “Zelda” game is supposed to be “the most prominent contributor to Nintendo’s sales for this fiscal year.”
The analyst at “MedCap Partners” Charles-Louis Blancad said that the sales of this version may be “the best in the history” of the game.
“A game could reach $1 billion in sales, and it’s very important for a company to make a little more than $10 billion in sales a year,” he added.
Nintendo, which has not yet announced its creation of a new console despite the persistent rumors in this regard, expects to achieve a net profit of 340 billion yen ($ 2.51 billion) for the fiscal year 2023-2024, which will be a decrease of 21% over the previous year. annual basis.
