The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake for Nintendo Switch 2 has reportedly posted the second-biggest Zelda launch in UK history, counting boxed copies alone. Its first week ran 35% ahead of Breath of the Wild's 2017 debut, according to NielsenIQ retail data that has been reported. It also reached only about half of what Tears of the Kingdom sold in its opening week.
That split raises a fair question about a remake of a 1998 Nintendo 64 game: is it a hit, or a middling Zelda launch? The answer depends less on the game than on how many people own the console it needs.
How the Ocarina of Time remake's UK launch compares with other Zelda games
The remake went on sale on Thursday, November 5, exclusively on Switch 2. It is also reportedly the biggest physical game launch in the UK so far in 2026, ahead of this year's Resident Evil, Call of Duty and EA Sports FC releases.
No unit figures came with the ranking, and Nintendo has not published sales numbers for the game. The comparisons are relative, but they are enough to place it: only Tears of the Kingdom opened bigger among Zelda games at UK retail.
Why the Switch 2 install base explains the gap to Tears of the Kingdom
Tears of the Kingdom arrived in May 2023 on a console that had sold 125.62 million units by the end of March that year, according to Nintendo's earnings release. The Switch 2 stood at 26.35 million units as of September 30, 2026, roughly a fifth of that audience.
Read that way, selling half of Tears of the Kingdom's opening week into a fifth of the hardware base is a strong start. It also lands after Switch 2 hardware sales slowed 41% in the September quarter, so that audience is now growing more slowly than it did a year earlier.
The Breath of the Wild comparison cuts the other way. That game launched on the same day as the brand-new Switch in March 2017, so its only audience was day-one Switch buyers and owners of the ageing Wii U.
What the Switch 2 remake changes from the 1998 original
Work on the remake began after Tears of the Kingdom shipped in 2023, and the result is a full rebuild rather than a port. Nintendo's launch post lists voiced cutscenes, orchestral music, a reworked camera and controls, and a new Hall of Fallen Foes where you can challenge powerful enemies again.
The look changed too, with an art style that deliberately departs from Breath of the Wild. Because the game runs only on Switch 2, every copy counted in the UK figures is a game that needs the newer console.
Why physical sales tell only part of the Ocarina of Time story
Boxed charts miss every download, and downloads now make up most of Nintendo's business. Digital sales were 60.7% of its dedicated video game platform sales in the six months to September 2026, up from 54.5%, according to Nintendo's results presentation.
That figure also includes add-on content and Nintendo Switch Online, so it is not a game-by-game split. Still, it suggests the UK ranking leaves out a large share of the remake's buyers.
The fuller picture should come with Nintendo's next quarterly report, the first to cover the remake's worldwide sales from launch. Until then, the UK numbers suggest appetite for a 28-year-old adventure was never the problem. The limit is how many homes have a Switch 2 to play it on.
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