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MTZehvor on 17 June 2013
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Cold-Flipper said:

MTZehvor said:

 A new Metroid certainly won't be released until late 2015 at the earliest now, which would give the Wii U two and a half more years to have its install base grow (with titles like Mario Kart 8, Super Smash Bros, Mario 3D World Super, and Zelda to boost the size of the Wii U community). Combine that with HD graphics and the fact that the Wii U will hopefully be far more "hardcore" friendly than the Wii was (on which Metroid Prime 3 sold 1.7 million), and the fact that Metroid games typically do better after a hiatus of sorts, and 2 million is well within reach, if not the bare minimum. 

And Metroid is nowhere near the bottom of the Nintendo food chain. Certainly, titles such as Pokemon, Mario/Nintendo's plethora of 2D platformers, and Zelda all outsell it, but it's still far ahead of the majority of Nintendo IPs (Fire Emblem, Kid Icarus, Wario, Pikmin, recent Star Fox titles, F-Zero, Earthbound, etc.).

You have to remember that the Wii wasn't all casuals. The big Nintendo fans purchased one as did much of the core crowd. When you sell nearly 100 Million systems, you can't just generalize and say it belonged to a single audience. Plus, while Nintendo has said to be more gamer focused, is that really the case? Sure, they have made attempts by getting a few platinum games, and finally decided to do Pikmin 3. When you look at most of it though, are they really focusing on core gamers? 

Metroid is certainly at the bottom of the recent Nintendo food chain for sure. You can't really judge the MIA games because we have no sales to compare it to. Nearly each series you mentioned hasn't had a game for a while now. Remakes obviously don't count. The only ones to compare from your list are Wario, Fire Emblem, and Kid Icarus. Smooth Moves outsold Prime 3 by a good amount, and KId Icarus on 3DS has outsold any recent HH Metroid. Fire Emblem is the only one that isn't debatable, Metroid sells better.

I really wouldn't be surprised at all if Pikmin, Star Fox, F-Zero, and Kid Icarus all outsell Metroid on Wii U. Especially, Pikmin. That game has the Japan support that gives it a big advantage over Metroid, kind of like Kirby.

Star Fox 64 3D has a comparable remake in Metroid: Zero Mission, and Assault was outsold by the 2D Metroid titles as well, so it's easily comparable. Uprising was also outsold by all but two of the portable Metroid titles (and neither of the two it outsold are particularly fair to Metroid as one was a remake and the other was barely even a Metroid game to begin with, as well as being overshadowed by the launch of Corruption next year).

Wario's a bit of an interesting series. Smooth Moves certainly sold well, but Shake It (which came out two years afterwards) sold rather poorly and even less than Other M. All of the recent portable titles have sold less than just about any portable Metroid as well, so on average I would say that contest goes to Metroid. 

And yes, I would say Nintendo has certainly become more "core gamer-focused." Unfortunately, I'm not likely to get that new F-Zero I've been wanting for a while, but Nintendo's E3 this year should have been all it took to realize that they're at least heading in the direction of being more focused on the core instead of the casual. 

Kind of a shame that I can't say that E3 brought back any sort of confidence in me for Nintendo's ability to innovate.