“It was huge.” On Friday at midnight, the Fnac Saint-Lazare store in Paris exceptionally opened its doors in the middle of the night to welcome Zelda fans. Because it is this May 12 that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom it was released to great fanfare, after widely convincing critics.
“That night was completely crazy,” enthuses Charlotte Massicault, director of gaming and multimedia products at Fnac-Darty, who hopes with this game the “biggest launch in gaming history” for her group.
“We expect 110,000 sales at the end of the weekend,” he explains. At the level of all brands, Nintendo expects 400,000 sales in this period.
FIFA defeated by Link?
By comparison, the FIFA franchise, the annual best-selling video game, typically sells 300,000 copies in its first weekend of operation. With a few differences: FIFA comes out a little before Christmas and on various consoles. Zelda accomplishes this feat by just turning the Nintendo Switch.
Throughout the year, Charlotte Massicault therefore imagines one of the biggest sales of the year: “1.2 million units sold or even 1.5 million”, when the current record held by FIFA23 is around 1.7 million. of games sold, on all platforms.
But the football franchise is being reviewed this year, after the end of the contract between the publisher Electronic Arts and FIFA, Zelda has every chance to keep the annual record.
Meanwhile, France could even experience some availability issues early next week if success continues at this rate. “Let’s cross our fingers” slips Charlotte Massicault who wants to be reassuring anyway: Nintendo had success planned.
Source: BFM TV
