This article originally appeared on Zelda Universe.
There’s no need to tell anyone here just how good Breath of the Wild is looking, and so inevitably, it has also caught the eye of industry analysts.
In an interview with GamerTag Radio, Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter was effusive in his praise for the new Zelda title, and predicted it would help sell a metric shedload of NX consoles right off the bat. “I think everybody who buys an NX will absolutely buy it, and I think it will sell them 10 million consoles pretty quickly. Zelda looked great. I mean, it really looks like a good game,” he said. We couldn’t agree more, Michael.
Pachter also believes that the beauty of Breath of the Wild indicates that the NX will have PS4-level power. Though he was unaware that the game is launching on the NX alongside the Wii U initially: “I actually did not realise that Zelda was launching on NX when NX launches. That makes me think NX is much more higher powered than I expected, that NX is an iteration probably closer to PS4 than I thought it would be, and it’s going to have a big title to support it.” We’ve known that this was the case since April ourselves, so you’d think an industry analyst would be aware of it, but there you go. Maybe the sheer awesomeness of Breath of the Wild blew the information out of his head.
Later in the interview he expresses some doubt about whether or not Nintendo will hit their stated March launch window for NX, suggesting a summer 2017 release could be more likely, unless Nintendo show off the hardware before the end of this year. It will be interesting to see just what impact Breath of the Wild will have on NX sales, and what the comparative attach rates are for the NX and Wii U versions of the game. Having learnt the lessons of the Wii U’s poor launch, Nintendo’s initial delay of both the NX and Zelda was to ensure the former had a strong launch line-up, so they’re obviously banking on the game playing a part in a strong release window.
Phil Myth 