A lot of people (like me) think the Metroid franchise is one of the best in the world. But the sales do not reflect this.

In the chart below I've collected the sales of the Metroid games that are tracked on VGchartz. The original Metroid game is still the 2nd best selling in the franchise, with double the sales of Super Metroid and Metroid Prime 3!

In Japan the franchise is barely selling at all anymore, which I guess is fine, the Japanese don't like this type of games. But what about America and Others sales?

After the rebirth on the franchise on GCN, with quite good sales on a console with a small install base, you would think the franchise had the perfect opportunity to keep growing, but the opposite has happened.

Metroid Prime was the 7th best selling game on GCN, which is quite good, but it was also by far the best game on the entire platform, maybe with the exception of Resident Evil 4.

Metroid Prime 2 did only 1.29m, making it the 28th best selling GCN game, but the GCN was a dying platform by then, so that partly explains the weak result.

The surprising thing is that Metroid Prime 3 barely did any better than Prime 2! Only 1.47m sales, the 25th best selling game on the platform! The game was barely advertised of course, and the advertisement campaign for some stupid reason was directed at the casuals which I think hurt sales a lot. Casuals will never play Metroid.

1.47m isolated is a respectable number, but as Metroid is the 3rd most respected Nintendo franchise after Mario and Zelda, this is quite weak, especially considering the development costs of the Metroid games. The big question is will Nintendo keep putting resources into developing great Metroid games when the sales are so low compared to their other franchises?

What can be done to get the Metroid sales up where they belong?

Creating a DS one would help. It sells software better than the GBA did.

Also, turning it into a pure FPS would significantly boost sales. MP3 and MPH are some way towards doing this. However, I think this takes away from what makes Metroid special and different.

If they made a 2-D Metroid, I'd buy it...I will not buy an FPS Metroid..the game doesn't belong in FPS to me, and the 2 I've tried I thought were horrible.

The game, being basically an FPS, appeals to a completely different crowd now.

Wow, I coulda swore I hear someone tell me that Metroid wasn't as big in Japan as it was in America. Apparently they didn't take into consideration that Super Metroid sold more there the here.

I Also didn't know that Metroid Prime was the highest selling Metroid. And I though Super Metroid did better than regular Metroid. (I guess because I'd never even knew about NES Metroid until a couple years ago.)

Well on topic, I guess they could add a peripheral to the next one. Like the arm cannon thingy in the game.

nintendo didn't advertize MP3 good enough, the preview channel was gert but you had to have an internet connection for it so it didn't have that great of an effect. and the damn "wii would like to play" didn't fit the game. it was aimed at the casual market and its not a casual game. It was too little too late. Retro made an amazing game but nintendo just brushed it to the side.

Well, it would surely help to make Metroid appeal to the average shooter fan. It's a first person adventure and that's great but online multiplayer would be really cool.

Basically this is a First Person game without multiplayer mode and many people want to play online.

Nintendo needs to realize they can't market Metroid the same way they do Wii Fit.

I remember a lot of advertising for Metroid Prime 3. After all, it didn't pull a 300k launch in America out of a hat. The reason Metroid isn't a big series is simply because it's too niche to appeal to a large audience like most other Nintendo games. Although some people would hate to admit it, a masked and silent hero in a sci-fi world has never been the perfect way to snag the Nintendo demographic (it doesn't help that the franchise isn't your typical shooter). Characters like Mario, Zelda, etc. have been so successful because they managed to appeal to everyone, from the youngest kid to the most battle-hardened fanboy. Metroid doesn't have that same type of appeal, and its popularity is shrunken by the more popular series. After all, why isn't Pikmin a bigger series? What about F-Zero? What about Yoshi?

'Sides, I think Metroid Prime was bundled with the Gamecube for a short while (explaining the high sales).

They're high enough to function, and that's all I really want. Making Metroid more "shootercore" in order to obtain higher sales would be compromising what makes the series great, and it's part of why I wasn't as impressed with Corruption as I could have been.

I know I love the Metroid Prime series na dpart 3 was excellent but somehow it didnt sell as well as I expected!

I am at a loss because I trully think it's great but many find the game very complicated because they try and compare it with traditional FPS!