Super Mario 3D Land Passes 8 Million Sales
Super Mario 3D Land sold over 30k units globally the week ending January 12, 2013, driving it from 7.98 million to 8.01 million sales. It is the first 3DS title to exceed 8 million sales, with Mario Kart 7 about 540k away. 3D Land reached this milestone 63 weeks after launch.
The most obviously comparable game to 3D Land should be Super Mario 64 DS, a launch title for the Nintendo DS which has sold over 9.9 million units since its 2004 debut. 64 DS is the only other 3D Mario platformer on a handheld console. However, the DS game took 263 weeks (over 5 years) to sell 8 million units, and had sold "only" 3.4 million units by week 63. Maybe it was because the game was a remake, or because the DS's d-pad was ill suited for 3D movement, but Super Mario 64 DS seems to make a poor comparison for 3D Land's sales. Strangely (and unusually for handheld games with home console counterparts), sales of Super Mario 3D Land seem to VERY closely follow the pattern of those of Super Mario Galaxy for Wii.
Super Mario Galaxy has sold over 10.6 million units since its 2007 release. As you can see from the graph, although 3D Land had a slightly stronger launch, the two games sold very similarly to one another for their first 52 weeks. Impressively, Super Mario 3D Land had a much stronger second Holiday season than Galaxy had. Galaxy sold about 580k in Nov-Dec 2008, while 3D Land sold about 1.18 million in Nov-Dec 2012, rocketing from an under-300k lead to an about 820k lead over the Wii game.
By week 63, Galaxy had sold almost 7.2 million units sold. It did not exceed 8 million sales until week 111, around the time of the 2009 Holiday season. It remains to be seen whether 3D Land's outpacing of Galaxy was a one-time occurrence resulting from bundling and other factors, or a sign that the 3DS game will have stronger Holiday legs than Galaxy in the future as well. If the boost was temporary, and 3D Land remains about 1 million units ahead of Galaxy, it will pass 9 million units before the end of 2013, and 10 million in early 2015. However, if the boost is the start of a trend, and 3D Land continues outpacing its Wii counterpart (especially during the Holidays), it could conceivably exceed 10 million sales by the end of 2013.
Either way, it is hard to imagine that the game will fall below Super Mario Galaxy's sales, and it seems likely that Super Mario 3D Land will ultimately sell over 11 million units, becoming the best-selling 3D Mario platformer since 1996's Super Mario 64.
