You shouldn't underestimate Donkey Kong Country Returns Carl.
Donkey Kong Country 3 sold over 3m on SNES at a time when PS1 and N64 were already established in the market - 1996 - 1997. When the SNES was still the biggest console in 1994/1995 the first DKC did 9.3m - thats bigger than Super Mario Galaxy 1 and likely 2 on a base 30m units smaller than Wii (by the time DKC Returns releases). The second DKC did 5.2m - and that was in 1995/1996 when PS1 was establishing itself with new platformers / new genres - many SNES users had moved on already. Donkey Kong 64 did 5m as well, and that was on the 33m N64 base. The Wii base in the USA alone will be larger than the N64 base by the end of 2010, and the SNES only got to 32m in the West, while Wii will be at 70m or more at the end of the year in the West.
We've seen that Wii tends to inflate old Nintendo series with multiplayer as a key component:
MK Wii >> MK DS >>>>>>>>> MK64 >> MK SNES >> MK GC >> MK GBA
Mario Party 8 >>>> All other Mario Parties
Smash Bros Wii >>> Smash Bros GC >>>> Smash Bros N64
NSMB Wii is at 15.4m in 9 months - it will easily top Super Mario World and SMB3 once it has a comparable amount of time on the market to those games.
If Donkey Kong 64 / DKC 1-2 both did over 5m when SNES / N64 were near their prime there is no reason to believe DKC Wii will do anything less than 5m - and I think 6-8m is likely, with 10m not out of the question. Its roughly as big as Reach / Gran Turismo 5, as there has yet to be a Donkey Kong game on Wii.
Donkey Kong isn't even the big game from Nintendo anyway - Wii Party will destroy it - probably sell 8-12m worldwide, may beat everything but Call of Duty: Black Ops that releases this Fall.
People are difficult to govern because they have too much knowledge.
When there are more laws, there are more criminals.
- Lao Tzu
