BOTW has the same attachment rate as Windwaker and Ocarina of Time, which nullifies the argument that Zelda has sold poorly until BOTW. Attachment rates are important, better than pure sales, because it tells you how many potential buyers bought the game.
BOTW and TOTK are still huge successes, but it's not really about great design (unfortunately). If it was, every one of Nintendo's games would be record smashing sellers, but they aren't. They have plenty of games that don't make a dent despite their insane attention to detail. We saw this with Mario Maker 1 & 2, not even cracking 10m copies to this day, and one can't even blame lack of name recognition, it's literally Mario!
Where great design does have impact is on long term word of mouth sales. Which we saw with BOTW and are likely to see here again.
I did not say that the Zelda franchise has sold poorly, just less well than BOTW / TOTK.
I don't think attach rates offer the full picture. Early on the audience for BOTW was so eager for the game they were buying the Switch just for BOTW. For a period the attach-rate was greater than 100%! But the Switch has broad appeal and the attach-rate of BOTW has declined as more types of gamers buy-in to the Switch. The Gamecube and (to a lesser extent) the Nintendo64 had less success than the Switch outside of core Nintendo fans which naturally means franchises like Zelda would have higher attach rates.
Mario Mario 1 & 2 are both well-designed executions of a concept that appeals to a more limited audience (building and playing user-made Mario levels). BOTW / TOTK hit that sweet spot of widely appealing concept and excellent execution.
BOTW and TOTK are still huge successes, but it's not really about great design (unfortunately). If it was, every one of Nintendo's games would be record smashing sellers, but they aren't. They have plenty of games that don't make a dent despite their insane attention to detail. We saw this with Mario Maker 1 & 2, not even cracking 10m copies to this day, and one can't even blame lack of name recognition, it's literally Mario!
Where great design does have impact is on long term word of mouth sales. Which we saw with BOTW and are likely to see here again.