May 16th, 2023, Rishad Dsouza
Legend of Zelda’s new release – Tears of the Kingdom – has received a tremendous reception since its launch on May 12. Among other noteworthy achievements, the title has received a 10/10 on IGN, 9/10 from Forbes, a five-star rating from the Guardian and a Metacritic score of 95. YouGov data from the US shows that consumers were likely expecting such a performance, even in lead-up to the game’s release.
Over the past 30 days, Buzz for the franchise has soared from 10.6 to 18.0. Notably, a good chunk of these gains have come in the two days since the game’s release, rising dramatically from 14.1 on launch day to 18.0 on May 14. The Buzz score is the difference between the percentage of respondents hearing positive things and the percentage hearing negative things about a franchise in the previous two weeks.
This positive flow of news and commentary is translating into gains on key brand health metrics. For instance, the franchise’s Quality scores have jumped from 20.6 to 29.2 over the course of the month, including a near four-point rise since launch date.
This sharp acceleration in upward trend so soon after the launch indicates that the expectations that consumers had been building up in anticipation of the release are being met and perhaps even exceeded. The same is the case with Impression scores, which have grown to 34.7 (from 31.4 on May 12 and 25.1 on April 15).
Over the course of the month, Consideration scores have been on the rise too, although not in as straightforward a manner as the other metrics. Starting at 16.0 last month, they peaked at 20.4 on May 5 and sit at 19.3 as of May 14. It must be noted that the share of Americans considering purchasing the title has risen nearly 2.7 points in the two days since the launch and may well trend further up.
All trends are pointing towards a very successful run for the title – indicating that the devs have succeeded in delivering a fitting successor to the wildly popular Breath of the Wild that launched in 2017.
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Methodology: YouGov BrandIndex collects data on major video game franchises in the US. The Buzz score of video games is based on the question “Over the past two weeks, which of the following video games have you heard something positive about?” and “Now which of the following video games have you heard something negative about?” and delivered as a net score between –100 and +100. Scores are based on an average daily sample size of 308 US adults. Figures are based on a one-week moving average. Learn more about BrandIndex.
Image Credit: The Legend of Zelda