I agree with Malstrom. Mario Galaxy being a 3d game hurt a lot of sales potential for the game and the market. If New Super Mario Bros Wii had come first I believe there would have been a larger audience to sell Mario Galaxy to. I believe that New Super Mario Bros Wii may in fact be the title to re-ignite the Japanese market. Nintendo needs to position it's key titles around that game. It'll be way more popular then Galaxy could ever hope to be.

2d Mario has always sold well. 3d Mario has been up and down and up again.

"I am not sure why Nintendo did not make a 2d Mario for consoles for almost twenty years, but I suspect one reason is that Nintendo thought 3d Mario and 2d Mario as the same exact series. They were Mario games. Consumers saw it differently. 3d Mario, while good, doesn’t have that simple arcade action as 2d Mario did. When Wii launched, Iwata referred to Super Mario Galaxy as the Mario game. If you liked 2d Mario as many people do, well, you felt lost since you wondered whether a 2d Mario would ever return. If it weren’t for the NSMB DS massive (18 million +) sales, I don’t think we’d have heard Cammie or anyone from Nintendo talk about 2d Mario and 3d Mario as different games."

I think you people are misunderstanding him. He actually always states Galaxy is a very good game but for the masses no and that's the truth. In Japan whether you want to admit it or not its a failure. Don't get me wrong, its my most-played game on the Wii and my favourite 3d mario but i always find myself tempted to download SMB3 or SMW on the VC. Those games just sort of let you imagine how the worlds would be in whatever way you saw Mario. It was almost magical. That said, I didn't like NSMB on DS. It just felt underwhelming but if nintendo can correct those flaws I believe I as well as millions of people will have a new favourite game of this generation.

you can try reading his sentiments on the nintendo conference and see why he seems to criticise galaxy a bit. The link is right here: http://seanmalstrom.wordpress.com/page/4/

Sorry but I disagree with that argument altogether. Super Mario Galaxy was NOT a failure. It didn't do as much as other Wii games, true, but it was still a bigger seller than SMS. And it's at 1 million there. Not a failure by any means. Perhaps not a "masses" game, but a failure? Not in the least.

As long as Nintendo continues to make games like SMG for me to play - which is among the best games I've ever played - then I'm fine with them releasing 2d Mario games to keep this struggling platform alive. :)

The thing about Malstrom's articles is he puts them together for avid readers of his text, he shows little regard for passerbys and crtical observers who haven't read just about every paragraph.

It's easy I guess in that light for someone to relate the right information to the wrong text.

That does make sense in most ways, but like you I'm having a bit of difficulty connecting "more (better?) content," as Malstrom defines it, with the Kart series. Super was obviously more original/fresh than its sequels, but that's not what "content" means. It can't mean "features" either, because Super has the least of those in the entire series. I won't deny that I liked Super better than all of them save Wii, but even to myself I can't explain why, so that doesn't help narrow down what Malstrom's getting at.

I recall he's recently made references to Mario Bros. 3 having more content than NSMB, and he cited things like the fact that in 3 Bowser had an entire military at his beck and call, while in NSMB there was a lot less character to latch onto. This, combined with the last paragraph in the section I quoted earlier, make it sound almost like he's talking about a game's "mythos," but that can't be it: ignoring the fact that it's pretty damned hard to imagine how the Kart games of Super/DS/Wii explored the world of Mario any deeper than 64/Advance/Double-Dash, there's also the fact that one of the few times he's criticized Blizzard is when they made Frozen Throne all about exploring that world's mythos ("Shut up and Play" would summarize his feelings on that game, I think).

I'm stumped. The best I can come up with is something about letting the player enjoy a world in the best gameplay-oriented manner, but not only is that pretty vague, it's also extremely arbitrary. The way he talks about Kart in particular is baffling, in light of how Super Mario Kart did worse at retail than Mario Kart 64 (despite the former being a "new" IP and enjoying a 20 million larger install base: if you're all about the business end, doesn't that tend to argue that 64 was embraced more than Super?).

I'll keep thinking on it, but I think this is one of those things he'll have to explain for himself.

The thing is, Mario (and Pokemon, and now the Wii ___ series) is not just another game; Mario platformers do not have the luxury of only having to sell millions of copies. to Nintendo, Mario has one job and one job only, and that is to move hardware units. They've got tons of other franchises which are meant to simply sustain momentum or make money, but Mario is supposed to act as Nintendo's Trojan Horse to get the system into your house in the first place. When he doesn't do that, he's like LeBron James sticking to playing just defense: h'es great in that role too, but that's not what you brought him in for, and it's certainly not living up to his real potential.

Then why bother even making Super Mario Galaxy 2. If Galaxy "failed" (which it did not in any way), then why make a sequel when it will bomb in Japan too?

How bout this:

Without Galaxy, what is the Wii, to someone like me?

In generations to come, when the high tide mark is clearly visible, and the massive but finite blue ocean is spread evenly over evergrowing competition, won't Nintendo still be glad they made ME happy?

I am, without a doubt, a long time Nintendo fan, who spends thousands of dollars on Nintendo merchandise every year.

Would you risk alienating me, for a short bump in Japan that you don't really need?

The Nintendo brand sells well, but don't be fooled. The Nintendo brand doesn't prioritize sales, it never has. It prioritizes its userbase casuals and core alike, and sales accumulated. With Galaxy, Nintendo told me, yes Josh, you are still a member of our userbase.

Thank you Nintendo, for not bastardizing a real Mario game, in the interest of profit and popularity. Instead be proud of your work. I will respect you for it, and we, afterall, are in this together.

...and you know what? They just announced the sequel.

Also, why take anyone seriously who doesn't like 3D Mario games? One, that means his argument is biased, and two, that means he doesn't like some of our favorite games. Commenting on the market, and commenting on videogames are two entirely different things. The market changes, the core fans never have.