Because it did? 88 on metacritic with essentially one mode.

im talking about the content, you said Splatoon has more content than MK8, all i wanna know is how can you tell?

By looking at them duh! One game has seperate modes for it's single local and online play while the other has the same for all 3. The only thing MK8 has more of is tracks versus Splatoon's arenas, but that's offset a bit by Splatoon's singleplayer having it's own levels, plus the direct tomorrow is sure to reveal more.

The "young casual market" aren't really playing home consoles any longer, so that won't do Splatoon any good. Most RPG's don't cater to the younger casual market, doesn't stop many of them to pull of decent sales. This is probably the least important audience group of them all for RPG's.

I think people are mistaken if they believe that a "unique online shooter" is what the market wants; sales of major franchises shows that this is more or less directly the opposite of reality, mainstream annual twitch-fests are the order of the day. I fear that Nintendo have forgotten that the vast majority of the Wii audience are long gone and aren't coming back, this game is quite clearly aimed at children and youth, but the core Nintendo owner is an adult (Nintendo console owners have the highest average age out of the big three) and kids have their faces glued to phones and tablets.

I honestly don't see a big market for Splatoon, that would not have changed had it released on other platforms either. Splatoon's proverbial potential audience is gaming on mobile devices and I'll be downright shocked if this title sells three times more than Xenoblade.
I maintain that Xenoblade will sell the most; JRPG's have proven audiences and this is a sequel to a game that did fairly well on the Wii, releasing on a platform that has been screaming for a good JRPG since launch, there is no proven audience for a title like Splatoon.
I'm with gergroy on this, and I think I've made the comparison before; W101 is a more realistic target for Splatoon to beat, people talking 2-3 million are being plain ludicrous, there are currently six 2 million seller on the Wii U and five of them are Mario games... (and the sixth has Mario in it as well, but isn't a main Mario title) And there are currently nine million sellers, none of them are not in remotely the same category as Splatoon.

If Splatoon manages more than 500k lifetime; it should be celebrated as a success for what it is, only about 20 of the 320 titles available on Wii U have managed to cross this line.

Xenoblade should be able to cross the 500k mark with a decent margin, even Bayonetta 2 is probably over 400k (grossly overtracked on here), with the prequel being on two entirely different platforms. No, I remain convinced that Xenoblade will sell more, I also fully believe that it will be the better title of the two.

It is safe to say that Xenoblade Chronicles X will sell more than 1 million. (the original sold .89m with limited distribution and being a new IP, since then, it was represented in Smash Bros, and this is one of the most highly anticipated games on the Wii U) So by your logic, do you expect Splatoon to sell over 3m? I expect Splatoon to sell over 2m with Xenoblade X being around 1.5m.

this thread is heading for an epic necro

Just an opinion.

A laughably nonsensical one! If anything Splatoon should appeal to the Nintendo fanbase moreso than Xenoblade based on the Wii U's top selling games, as all of which are multiplayer, hence Splatoon is more like those games than Xenoblade.

Ok, let me put it this way. I was trying to tiptoe around saying it but... Splatoon is incredibly niche. It's a shooter game that  won't appeal to an immense amount of gamers. I may be wrong, I would love to be prooved wrong but Splatoon won't be a game that generates an explosion of sales for Wii U. In the PUBLIC eye, it's just another kids game. It isn't anything like Call of Duty, GTA, or anything of the sort. Am I saying those games are better than Splatoon? No, I'm just formulating an opinion here. Splatoon isn't like Mario or Zelda because it is new. Gamers, especially American gamers of this day and age, don't want anything new or child like. A vast majority of them anyway. Xenoblade has a much more mature feel that will bring in JRPG gamers just like Chronicles did. You may be right, you may not be. But that is no reason to downplay one's opinion, even if it doesn't make sense to you. That's silly bro.

Sadly for me, i would say Splatoon. I think its going to be very popular on FPS land, or US. ^^

Though Xenoblade would have the potencial to sell more if it was properly advertised. I dont think Nintendo does that kind of advertising, so i'm expecting modest sales.