NINTENDO REMADE A 1998 ZELDA GAME IT SOLD 5.2 MILLION COPIES IN JUST 4 DAYS The game is The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, originally released on the Nintendo 64 in 1998. Nintendo rebuilt it from the ground up for Switch 2, with new graphics, levels and character designs. It launched on Nov. 5 for $59.99. The original sold about 7.6 million copies over its lifetime on the N64. The remake reached 68% of that total in just four days. It has already surpassed Donkey Kong Bananza's lifetime sales. ONLY MARIO KART WORLD, which was bundled with the Switch 2 console, has sold more on the platform. Critics and players have both given it a 96 on Metacritic. The 1998 original still holds Metacritic's highest score ever: 99. The timing is important for Nintendo. Switch 2 hardware sales fell 41% YoY from July through September, while rising memory chip costs have also pushed console prices higher. Back in 2017, Breath of the Wild helped drive sales of the original Switch. This remake could play a similar role for Switch 2 heading into the holiday season. Nintendo's newest hit is 28 years old.

Nintendo of America is hiring a digital archivist to stop its older development history from disappearing. The Historical Systems contract runs about 12 MONTHS in the Redmond area. The person would organize technical records, engineering documents, source materials, and hardware info from past platforms, then interview longtime staff to capture knowledge that was never written down. Nintendo says the goal is a system future teams can still use for remakes or remasters once veteran developers retire.

Nintendo has no immediate plans to increase the Switch 2’s price, even as memory costs continue to rise across the industry. President Shuntaro Furukawa says the company has secured enough memory chips to maintain its current pricing strategy. Nintendo also wants to keep the console accessible rather than risk pricing more players out of the market.