New Super Mario Bros. 2 Passes 4 Million Sales, 1 Million in Europe:
New Super Mario Bros. 2 passed 4 million sales globally and 1 million in Europe the week ending December 15, becoming the third 3DS title to accomplish both feats, after Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7. These are also the only three 3DS titles to sell one million units in each of the three major regions. Additionally, this week New Super 2 surpassed the SNES game Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island in lifetime sales.
The milestone of 4 million global sales was reached in the game's 21st week. Despite the accomplishment, the game's predecessor, New Super Mario Bros. for DS, reached the same milestone in under half the time -- just 10 weeks. By its 21st week, NSMB had already sold over 6 million units. Both were released about at about the same time in their respective consoles' cycles, to roughly the same install bases. NSMB was released in late May-June 2006, while NSMB2 was released this past July-August.
Although experiencing undeniably slower sales than previous iterations, it is clear that New Super Mario Bros. 2, like other games in the subseries, will be dependent on long legs for high sales. Long-term expectations for the 3DS installment are that it will continue to follow a similar trend to the DS installment and ultimately exceed 20 million sales after several years.
Mini-update:
New Super Mario Bros. 2 passed 5 million sales globally the week ending December 29th, just two weeks after passing 4 million. It reached the new milestone in its 23rd week on sale, whereas the DS New Super Mario Bros. reached 5 million in just 14 weeks. By its 23rd week, the DS title had sold over 6.25 million copies, and was heading into its first Holiday season, which would propel it to 8 million sales by week 32.
In other news:
• Animal Crossing: New Leaf's Japanese debut has been a resounding success. Even without counting the game's reportedly considerable digital sales, it is tracking over 500k units ahead of Wild World, its DS predecessor, after 10 weeks. By week 7, it had already outsold Super Mario 3D Land, Mario Kart 7, and Monster Hunter 3G in lifetime sales, and in its 8th week (the week ending December 30 in Japan), it became the first 3DS title to pass 2 million physical sales in Japan.
