Core gamers and magazines/sites hyping NSMB Wii worries me

[Kenryoku_Maxis]

Erik Aston said:

Kenryoku_Maxis said:

No game selling 10 Million is a flop.  That's like saying games like Halo 3 and GTAIV were flops because they only sold around 10 Million.  10 Million is a pinnacle of sales only a small fraction of games reach.  Just because certain games Nintendo has made has gone beyond that doesn't mean every game will.  And if they don't, it doesn't mean they're a 'flop'.  If anything, the monumental sales for New Super Mario bros on DS are beyond anyones expecations and so demanding New Super Mario Bros Wii to do as good or BETTER than the DS game or deeming it a flop is just an unfair judgement.

There is not any arbitrary sales number that absolutely means success for any game.

GTA series only has one game which has ever sold 20 million copies in San Andreas. And third party games never have the goal to sell hardware. So expecting every GTA game to reach 20 million and move hardware isn't fair. Halo had never sold 10 million before Halo 3. The goal of Halo 3 was to grow the Halo phenomenon and sell 360s. It accomplished that.

Mario has had a whole stack of games sell 15 and 20 million copies, and the goal of all of them was to sell hardware. NSMBW needs to live up to it's history. You can't excuse it if it sells less than Super Mario 64 or Super Mario Land 2. It does not necesarily need to do better than NSMB DS. I don't think I said that; NSMB will sell 25+ million. I think 15 million sales is the baseline to consider the game successful.

The original point I was trying to make is the same as your first point, there's no set basis of what makes a game 'successful'.  That basis is set after the game sells and compared to otehr games released around it.

Yet after you made that point, you seemed to contradict yourself everywhere.  Stating NSMB has to 'push hardware' and 'it'll be a flop if it doesn't sell as good as Mario 64 and Mario Land 2' and then saying 'it doesn't have to do as well as NSMB'.

Why does this title have to be a major console mover, when its been proven that the 'Wii' titles and games like Mario Kart are already good at doing that?  And why does it have to match the sales of all the past Mario games?  The game isn't on the NES or N64 or Game Boy and more importantly, is completelty different game than Mario Land 2 or especially Mario 64 (a 3D Mario title).  And then why does it not have to match NSMB DS if it has to match the other Mario titles in sales?  Where's the magic number?  ......10 Million?