Well Mario Kart was one of the few franchises that didnt vastly change on GC. Mario had a vacation game that felt like a spin off, Zelda was too "kiddy", Donkey Kong became rhythm/music based, Star Fox left the cockpit to fight dinosaurs and Kirny became a racer, basically Mario Kart and Smash were the only ones that felt like true sequels so thats a big part of why I feel GC underperformed, also Metroid is the only one that beneffited from drastically changing. So far it seems like all the major Nintendo ips are stayinh true to there roots, 3D World, Tropical Freeze, Smash, Kart are all traditional installments and I think that benefit Wii U.

MKDS and MKWii grew the brand by quite a lot, and this is looking to be the best one in the series so far.

It'll do decently enough me thinks. Still gonna hit that 1/3 ratio though. Maybe even 1/2.5

If you think Mario Kart: Double Dash didn't help the GameCube that much, then I guess practically anything Nintendo does will help the Wii U. So yeah, Mario Kart 8 will help the Wii U.

If Nintendo only releases sequels to GC games, I'd definitely expect Wii U to outsell the GC. Nintendo & its games have grown a lot since 2001.

lol no, only reason mario kart was such a big system seller on the wii is because of the motion controls. it will help the wii u but it will not do what people hope it will.

It would be more correct to say Mario Kart / Smash Bros. Sunshine underperformed for Mario standards.

edit: Uhm...no ok, I was worng, still sold more 6mil, just checked.

It will help Wii U a lot.

Double Dash was somewhat held back by its two-character mechanic that made it confusing to novices, MK8 doesn't seem to have such a problem. And Mario Kart has grown massively since the 6th gen.

Mario Kart is much more popular, but WiiU is much less competitive as a console. I'm expecting somewhere between 10 and 13 million lifetime sales, with bundling and later price cuts. I'm also expecting Smash Bros U somewhere between Melee and Brawl in terms of sales.

The numbers are misleading. The GCN had an incredibly small install base. Meanwhile, the Wii's install base was quite large, plus MKart Wii was bundled in with hardware as well. Bundles sell software big time. It has nothing to do with the franchise 'growing', only better hardware sales tactics. When MKart U comes out, unless it's bundled with hardware, it will likely see GCN-like sales. In no way will it sell huge with the small install base of Wii U. And if anyone's expecting this game to save hardware sales, just look at what happened with GCN. Not much of anything.

They should capitalize on this right away by making a Wii U bundle with Mario Kart like they done with the Wii version then we could see 20 million+ lifetime.