Super Mario Galaxy vs. Halo 3 - Which game will sell more units overall?

[Bodhesatva]

Final-Fan said:

Bodhesatva said:

Avinash_Tyagi said:

ckmlb said:
I think you are really overestimating Mario's sales.

Super Mario Galaxy:

Japan- 1,800,000 (Not casual enough to sell more)
USA- 3,500,000 (Will sell very well but not even close to non traditional titles)
Others- 2,000,000 (Will sell well)
Total- 7,300,000

Halo 3:

Japan- 150,000 (Only 360 hardcore and some adopters)
USA- 8,000,000 (Biggest 360 game of the year)
Others- 1,500,000 (Will sell well in the UK and Australia and decent in other parts)
Total- 9,960,000

Hahahahahaha, you really only expect 1.8 million in Japan for mario? Hahahahahahahahahaha

Mario 64 and Mario Sunshine each did less than that (Sunshine considerably so). It's not an outlandish claim, Avinash.

According to VGChartz, SM64's Japanese sales were about 2 million of about 12 million, or 1/6th of the total. As for the Nintendo 64, Japan got 5.5 million of 33 million total, or 1/6th of the total. Sunshine sold .87 million in Japan out of 5.91 million total, or approximately 15%. The Gamecube sold 4 million in Japan of 21.6 million total, or about 19%

(A) Super Mario 64 did as well in Japan, relatively speaking, as outside of it. Super Mario Sunshine did, admittedly, somewhat worse.
(B) SM64's sales in Japan were held back -- a lot -- due to the small install base of the N64 there. Ditto SMS.
(C) The Wii is insanely popular in Japan. In fact, almost DS Lite popular.
(D) Wii sales in Japan currently stand at about 82% of American Wii sales, based on VGChartz's Compare Consoles graph. (As of now, the graphs end at 2.98 and 3.64, respectively)
(E) Based on past performance and (D), it is most reasonable to suppose that, if the J-Wii to A-Wii ratio stays similar, Super Mario Galaxy will sell not less than 70-75% as many copies in Japan as in America.
(F) 1.8 is 51.4% of 3.5.
(G) I believe that ckmlb is greatly overestimating the Japanese obsession with casual games -- that specifically, he is presuming that that obsession will cause them to disregard games that are not casual. Whatever "casual" is.

I'm not denying any of this. I agree that 1.8 million is probably low. I said that Ck's claim wasn't unreasonable. I do actually choose my words carefully; I'm not a person who thinks any synonym is as good as another.

Yes, there are lots of mitigating factors, many of which you listed here, that make me believe that SM64 levels (or above) are much more likely than Sunshine levels. I think that's likely. But that doesn't make Ck's claim unreasonable -- again, perhaps not likely, but certainly not unreasonable.

Look at Ck's claim, then look at the response to it. Apparently, Ck's claim is hilariously off, according to Avinash. Does that seem appropriate to you, given that Ck's estimation actually assumes that Super Mario Galaxy will match the performance of the best selling Super Mario platforming game in 15 years? I'm going to repeat that for emphasis: in Japan, Ck believes that Super Mario Galaxy will perform as well as the best selling Super Mario game since 1992's Super Mario World. That is definitely not unreasonable.