The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Has Sold Nearly 18 Million Units

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild reached nearly 18 million units in worldwide sales, between its Nintendo Switch and Wii U versions.

At a financial results briefing for their third quarter, Nintendo announced that the game has shipped 16.34 million units on the Switch globally. The last known estimates for the Wii U version were 1.6 million units, which brings the game’s total estimated shipments to 17.95 million units.

That puts Breath of the Wild‘s sales far, far ahead of the second-highest-selling game in the series, Twilight Princess. That game has sold 8.85 million units between its Wii and Nintendo GameCube versions.

A sequel to Breath of the Wild was revealed at E3 2019, and is presently in development for the Nintendo Switch. It is believed that Monolith Soft, the studio behind the Xenoblade series of games, is assisting with development, just as they did with its predecessor. After development wrapped on Xenoblade Chronicles X, a large number of the design staff that worked on that game contributed to tasks such as game design, environmental art, and dungeon art on Breath of the Wild.

Monolith Soft now appears to have a dedicated “Production 2” unit for Zelda, and began hiring for this team last year.