Nintendo Can Solve All Its Wii U Problems With Metroid

[MTZehvor]

Cold-Flipper said:

MTZehvor said:

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.

You can't really compare newer games with sales of older games because popularity changes and different factors like who developed the game certainly makes a difference. I'm just saying if Retro made a Star Fox and Metroid on Wii U, my money would be on Star Fox to sell more.

Certain series I guess are roughly even, and Pikmin is also still debatable but we shall see with Pikmin 3. Either way, Metroid still gets outsold by:

 

• Super Mario (2D/3D)
• Mario Kart
• Paper Mario
• Mario Party
• Luigi's Mansion
• Donkey Kong
• Zelda
• Animal Crossing
• Kirby
• Super Smash Bros
• Wii Series
• Pokemon
• Nintendogs
• Professor Layton

 

I would still classify as pretty low on the totem pole.

To me, nearly every game on Wii U so far could've been a Wii game in terms of how core they are. With that said, I'm fine with that since I liked the Wii. They could be a bit more core though I guess. Does Nintendo really need to innovate like the DS or Wii? To me the games still look very Nintendo.  Have yet to play them though so I can't judge.

 

I'm certainly not going to argue that Metroid is anywhere near the top of the list, especially in sales. But the issue here is that the list of games Nintendo develops and/or publishes is huge, so compared to the average Nintendo published title, yes, it sells fairly well.

And considering that Nintendo can usually only release one of the titles per series you mentioned every three years without said series going stale (except for Mario, which Nintendo apparently believes can never go stale), Metroid is consistently up there as one of those series that gets kicked around a lot even though it doesn't sell way up there with some other series. The fact that it has an incredibly dedicated fan base, as well being one of the few "mature" series Nintendo has, gives it a sense of lasting impact and importance that most series with its sales wouldn't.

So I think saying it's "low on the totem pole" is selling it short.