Nintentoast
Banned
What do you call Zelda sales going so cold that Nintendo of America ordered that Aonuma's Wind Waker sequel be scrapped, then getting set on fire with Twilight Princess, then going cold again when the Twilight Princess approach was abandoned?
If the one time Eiji Aonuma was shot down was the one time the series actually showed any growth whatsoever since Wind Waker, what does that tell you about Aonuma's approach to Zelda?
Two things about Twilight Princess:
1.) It launched on Nintendo's most successful console ever
2.) Most Zelda fans agree that Twilight Princess's visuals have aged horribly and that The Wind Waker was overall a better game
What this tells me about Aonuma's approach to Zelda is that he isn't willing to sacrifice his artistic vision, the same vision that brought us the vibrant Wind Waker which still holds up today, for sales when it's not clear whether that would even translate to Twilight Princess-like results (in ratio to Wii U, of course).
Moreover, what does the fact that even other games published by Nintendo that feature Zelda characters tend to lean on Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess as the "correct" art style to represent the series? Even when Smash Bros. includes non-OoT/TP content (like Toon Link, or stages from Toon Link games), it's always as an alternative to the OoT/TP stuff. Nintendo even went as far to show off Twilight Princess content in HD when they introduced their new console.
It's plain and obvious that Nintendo knows that fans identify more with OoT/TP than the games over which Aonuma exercised more of his own discretion. Why else would they use OoT/TP so much in anything that is not an actual Zelda game?
I do not decide any of this. I do not decide which Zelda games are more popular. I do not decide which brand image Nintendo chooses to use when it represents the series outside of the actual games. And I do not decide what kinds of games Eiji Aonuma chooses to make. I can only observe what is actually happening.
I'm sorry, but this just reads as a conspiracy theory.