 Before I get into this video, I just want to remind you that we're on our road to 133,000 subscribers, so I'd appreciate if you would subscribe to the channel and help a guy out here as he chases his dreams of being a full-time YouTuber. Oh, beyond all of that, I also have a giveaway going on right now for our subscribers. It is for a replica Hylian Shield, two Zelda Switch OLED editions, and two Tears of the Kingdom Collectors editions. You can enter down in the pinned comment or in the description, just click on the link. It'll explain everything there. It is for a kick-off giveaway for our Prime Gaming Fest, which actually happens next week. You guys, I know don't know what that really is yet, we'll have a video explaining all that later this week. Alright guys, let's get into the news, because believe it or not, this is some news, and this news comes way of dear friend of the channel, Paul Gale Network. Now if you don't know who Paul Gale is, I understand. He's not somebody who is super active in the gaming world like he once was. He has worked at many different outlets over the years and has a lot of connections, right? I mean, he was at the Mario Premiere, isn't it? Like the Mario Movie Premiere with Jack Black and all those people, Miyamoto, etc. So he's been around all of them. He's going to be at the Summer Game Fest live show, I believe, as well. The man is connected, right? He's been in this industry for a long time. He's literally never missed an E3, and E3 used to be industry only. So yeah, Paul Gale knows a thing or two, and he's heavily connected, specifically in the Nintendo universe. And one thing Paul Gale gets right a lot of the time, and I say a lot of the time, it's pretty much every time, is when he talks about sales numbers. That is because he's a very connected person and basically gets the numbers directly from the source. And no, I don't know who the exact people are that he talks to. All I know is every time I talk about his numbers, the numbers get reported later, and it turns out his numbers were correct. So for us, and because I happen to know Paul Gale on a more personal level, I know that this is not a rumor. This is reality. He put out a tweet last Friday, May 26, stating, by the end of this weekend, Tears of the Kingdom will have passed 15 million copies sold worldwide. After just 17 days of being available, that's indeed a tremendous success. Nintendo Switch hardware is also on a roll, selling wonderfully in its 75th month of availability. Now he doesn't give exact numbers, but we all know that Nintendo Switch has gotten its lead back in Japan and maintained it now for over a month. And we know the sales of the general of Switch have just been on the rise due to Tears of the Kingdom. Of course, Nintendo themselves expect sales to dwindle over time, which of course they will. Tears of the Kingdom isn't just going to suddenly make the Switch sell another 20 million units this fiscal year. In fact, it didn't even sell 20 million last fiscal year. So it is notable, however, when we think about Tears of the Kingdom selling 15 million copies. Now we know it sold just north of 10 million copies in its first three days on the market. So you might go, well, okay, three days on the market. So over the next two weeks, it only sold 5 million copies. That's not that impressive. Imagine two weeks from now, we're talking about it selling 20 million. Imagine, man, just thinking it had two months that it has sold maybe 30 million. Now, again, these are obviously projections and sales should continue to dwindle for a little bit, at least unless they announce like new DLC or start bundling things. You know, Nintendo ain't going to price drop to make the sales go back up. But it's pretty clear that Tears of the Kingdom is probably going to crawl its way to 20 million units by the end of this fiscal year. And that is astounding that the game is doing this. I want people to keep in mind that what Animal Crossing New Horizons did in selling 30 million in 12 calendar months. What Pokemon Scarlet and Violet has done so far, moving north of 20 million in just over six months, is not normal. This is not something that just any game does. This is not something that outside of maybe mega franchises, like a Grand Theft Auto or a Minecraft, something along that it look maybe a Call of Duty, there aren't very many things that can sell like this. And Nintendo themselves doesn't have very many that can sell like this. And yet, Tears of the Kingdom is going to be among those 20 million sellers in its first six months. Now again, right now it's just at 15 million, but I got no doubt. No doubt in my mind that we fast forward five months and it's going to clearly be at 20 million copies. Why? Because it's the leading candidate for game of the year. And being the leading candidate for game of the year often leads to pretty strong trail of sales. I mean, heck, we already know it was the top selling game in the UK for the third week running. We don't know MPD numbers at the moment because we get those a month later. Now, this is just fascinating to me thinking about 15 million copies. That's almost twice as many as Twilight Princess Silt, which was the previous, before Breath of the Wild, best selling Zelda game of all time. Now, the big question of course is when you hear 15 million in 17 days, is can it catch up to or surpass the sales of Breath of the Wild? That is going to be a key caveat. I don't know if Tears of the Kingdom can get to that 30 million mark or go higher unless, and this is the big unless, a new platform comes out, Nintendo re-releases the game and say, I don't know, 4K, 60 FPS or something like that. And then they count those sales in with these sales because you're going to get a lot of repeat buyers and then you can see a 30 million threshold. But to me, that's also a little bit of cheating since they didn't launch at the same time. This to me would be like adding Ocarina of Time N64 to Ocarina of Time 3D from the 3DS. It would be like adding those sales together. I don't think that's a fair barometer of the actual popularity of an individual game. So I do think that that might be a little muddled if Nintendo decides to do that. But what I will say is, this is still incredible either way. It is already going to be in Nintendo's top 10 selling games before it's even been out on the market a month. And that is astounding. If you think of Nintendo's top 10 selling games, it's not an easy list to crack. It's really not. Just looking at that top 10 list, the least selling game on that list, the least selling game in the top 10 is Ring Fit Adventure at 15.38 million. And Tears of the Kingdom is certainly going to pass that. It's probably going to pass new Super Mario Bros. Unilux. By the end of this year, it's going to be ahead of Super Mario Party at 19 million and really competing up there with the Mario Odyssey's at the 25 million mark or so and trying to get into that top five slot. Remember, right now, Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild is in the number four position at the moment. I had a Pokemon Sword and Shield, but behind Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. So it has a shot to get up there. I am very curious what you guys think about the sales of this game. Are you impressed that it sold 15 million in 17 days? Do you think it would maybe sell even more than that? So maybe you're not as impressed. And where do you think the sales top out for this version of the game? Is it going to hit 20 mil? It doesn't have a shot at 30 mil, even though it won't have six years on the market on this platform as being a lead sales candidate on a growing platform, right? We're at the tail end of the Switcher's life. So even if a new system doesn't come out until holiday 2024, that still only gives it, you know, a year, year and a half to gain sales versus the last game that had six. Is that going to be something that hurts it? Or do you think this is the new Animal Crossing and saying, oh, it'll hit 20 mil by the end of this year is a major undershoot. And it's actually about to pull an Animal Crossing new horizons out of its hat and sell 30 million by the end of this fiscal year, which ends in March of 2024. Time will tell, of course, and maybe it gets a massive sales boost around the holiday season. If it wins game of the year, the game awards as has been actually shown by prior game award events. If you wonder why Nintendo participates heavily in the game awards to this day, and actually last year was the most they had participated in a while, suggesting that Nintendo is understanding now how big of a marketing event the game awards really is games that win some of the top awards at the game awards, including game of the year, almost always receive a big sales boost. Why is that? Because you're reaching a new audience of gamers because the event reaches hundreds of millions of gamers, which is bigger than any individual platform. So it is interesting to see if tears of the Kingdom wins game of the year, they could get a boost of sales in December as well. So I do think tears of the Kingdom will cross 20 million quite easily and will do so before we even get to this holiday season. That's my prediction. Of course, maybe it takes the holiday season to get to 20 million. But what do you guys think? And of course, as always, big shout out to dear friend of the channel, Paul Gale Network, we'll have to get you back on the podcast soon, man. It's been a while. I know the time zones don't always match up between work and everything, but we'll we'll figure something out, man. Thank you guys for tuning in and I'll catch you in the next video.