The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake is the most anticipated game

What the report says

Listen now on Apple, Spotify or YouTubeIn This Edition,The biggest games of 2026 (not GTA)Zelda old vs newCall of Duty fights backSony’s big Wolverine betPlus, Blood of the Dawnwalker, Star Wars, Gears and moreWe have a bit of a fun one for you this week. That’s right, no lay-off chat, nothing on the death of discs, or the rising price of consoles. Today, we are all about video games.And the question we’re asking… what is the biggest video game still to come this year?We know GTA 6 will be No.1, and we know sports games like EA Sports FC, Madden and NBA will be competing for the top places.

But what of the rest?Because we’re The Game Business, we naturally turned to data for the answer.Analytics company LevelUp gave us statistics on the best-performing trailers this year, the games generating the most video views, and the titles that the press are writing about the most. Meanwhile, our friends at IGN gave us the games their audience has wish listed the most, while those clever folks at GameDiscover supplied us with its Steam Wishlist chart.As you can see, Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake has been a standout performer.

The game received a short teaser trailer in June and it shot to the top of the trailer charts, even beating out the likes of Marvel’s Wolverine and Call of Duty. It’s also comfortably generated more press coverage than any other game. It’s also No.3 in the IGN’s most wanted list, and No.3 in terms of overall video views (despite the lack of details about the title).Zelda is a game that has a large, die-hard audience, which lends itself well to this data set. But could it really be one of the biggest games of the year?In 2017, Nintendo released Breath of the Wild, a sandbox-style open world Zelda that became a huge hit.

Key details

It’s sold close to 35 million copies, and its sequel, Tears of the Kingdom, has exceeded 22 million. Both are by far the most successful Zelda games ever made.Before Breath of the Wild, Zelda games were a little more linear and prescribed. They are popular, but on a different scale. The best-selling Zelda game of this type was the 2006 Wii and GameCube game Twilight Princess, which sold just short of nine million copies. The original Ocarina of Time was just below eight million. Outside of those, ‘old-style’ Zelda games typically sold between four and six million copies.Nintendo has released some of these older-style Zelda titles since Breath of the Wild.

In 2019, there was a remake of the Game Boy game Link’s Awakening, in 2021 there was a HD remaster of Skyward Sword, and in 2024 it released Echoes of Wisdom, a new 2D Zelda. All three games sold in that four to six million sales bracket.Nevertheless, none of them are a remake of the ‘greatest game of all time’. Our thinking at The Game Business is it could be one of the best-selling ‘old-style’ Zelda game, but it won’t come close to the performance of the newer games.But, as of right now, we know so little about it.World-class game art end to endKeywords Studios is the games industry’s end-to-end partner, with 13,000 people across 26 countries helping studios build, launch and support games at global scale.

Supercharged by technology and shaped by long-term partnership, Keywords Studios connects specialist expertise around the player experience.For game art, that means creative production at scale without losing craft, consistency or intent. From concept and asset creation to full production pipelines, Keywords Studios helps studios expand creative capacity, support world-building and deliver art from concept to final player experience.One of the games that has a lot of pressure on its shoulders is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4. Its YouTube and video stats are positive (Call of Duty doesn’t get too much press coverage these days), but the series is at a low point, so there’s a lot riding on this year’s game.Call of Duty had this strategy of releasing a big game and quickly following it up with a sequel.

More from the announcement

We had Modern Warfare 2 in 2022, followed by Modern Warfare 3 in 2023. Then Black Ops 6 in 2024, followed by Black Ops 7 in 2025. Those ‘quick sequels’ all performed poorly by Call of Duty standards.In particular, 2025’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 was a disaster. Its launch sales in Europe were 50% lower than its predecessor. In the US, Call of Duty is typically the best-selling game every year, but in 2025 it was No.5.