| superhippy420 said: Yes Donkey Kong. The SNES ones sold over 17 million and were the game that pushed the SNES over the Genesis. More recently DKCR has sold 6.1 million on Wii and the 3DS version is at 1.14 million which is higher then the Vitas top selling game. Infamous? The 1st two combined only sold 4 million, and it was a pack in game for a while. Donkey Kong is terms of sales is just as big an Uncharted, and since Nintendo has'nt run it in to the ground by releasing 4 in 5 years, I have no doubt it will sell consoles. The Gamecube didnt sell great because 1. It didnt have a DVD player 2. Came out when the PS2 already had a massive install base 3. Tried to be the graphic powerhouse, hardcore console and that has never worked. Mario Kart and Smash Bros have had over a decade to grow in popularity since then and the recent sales on Wii, DS, and 3DS prove that they have. I could even make an easy case that Wii Fit is the most underated system seller ever. Wii Fit and Wii Fit Plus combined sold 44 million, yet Infamous which sold 10 percent of that is a system seller. Come on now numbers dont lie. |
Donkey Kong did great back then. It does very well today but it's not nearly the same. Selling 6 million on a console that moved 100 million units and had 6 titles that sold more than 20 million, not including Wii Sports,while selling 17 million on a console that moved about 50 million units years before kinda puts things into perspective. It's safe to say that DK's popularity has greatly declined. How many copies would it have sold if the Wii hadn't sold as many units as it did? Apparently you don't need to run a franchise into the ground for people to care less and less about it.
A franchise doesn't have to have sold great for another entry to sell much better. The original Killzone sold a million copies on a console that was absolutely crushing the competition. Killzone 2 sold about 3 million copies on a console that was fighting its way back up. Infamous: Second Son is getting plenty of attention and releasing at a time when the console doesn't have many exclusive retail titles. If it turns out to be a great game don't be surprised to see it move consoles. That still leaves Driveclub, The Order, and Uncharted if it releases this year.
Even then, the PS4 has many other third-party games releasing. As long as it has a solid and rapidly expanding roster of games it doesn't need any singular bombshell titles to move consoles. A concept that seems lost on many people. If 5 games release on the PS4 or X1 that move a million consoles combined but the Wii U gets 3 games that move 750,000 combined... who moved more? You also can't overlook big third-party games coming on the PS4 and X1 that the Wii U isn't getting. Destiny, The Witcher 3, The Division, Metal Gear Solid 5. These games will move consoles. It's also no secret that games like Assassin's Creed IV hardly sold on Wii U while selling much better on X1 and PS4. Watch Dogs also appears to be getting far more pre-orders on those two consoles.
Smash Bros and Mario Kart were already a big deal before the Wii and DS. That they did well is no surprise but that doesn't mean they're going to sell more than anything the competition has. Just as it was with the Gamecube and Nintendo 64, if the console isn't offering people what they want out of a games platform most of them will go to the ones that do and no Smash Bros or Mario Kart will change that. The Wii sold as well as it did based on novelty, price point, and a typically non-gamer crowd being drawn to it because of how it was marketed. The fact that a fitness game sold twice as many copies as Smash Bros or Mario Galaxy should give you a clue. Wii Sports Resort, Wii Play, Wii Fit, Wii Fit Plus. Those were obviously not aimed at your average gamer and only Mario Kart Wii and New Super Mario Bros Wii were able to hang with the ridiculous sales of that software. That makes me more inclined to believe that those games sold as well as they did not because of the games themselves, not saying they weren't good, but because they were bought by millions of people who bought the platform for other reasons and those games just stuck out. Like I asked. Did the games sell the system or did the system end up selling the games?
The Wii U was out a year before the competition and is already having its number challenged. The Wii came out a year after the 360, which had an install base of nearly 10 million at that time, and blasted right by it. Obviously a one year lead doesn't matter that much even if you have an impressive initial install base.
Yes. It wasn't a DVD player. Though the Xbox, which had a DVD player, sold only 4 million more consoles while the PS2 sold 130 million more. Shouldn't Nintendo's first-party titles been able to move it beyond the Xbox at least? They should have allowed the Gamecube to move many millions more units. It even had a cheaper starting price. That or the Xbox should have sold a lot more and none of Nintendo's first-party titles were going to save it from lacking capabilities present in other consoles. Then that doesn't make much sense because didn't the Wii lack a lot compared to the 360 and PS3?
Graphic powerhouse? The Gamecube was the mid-range console for graphics when it launched. The Super Nintendo was superior graphically to the Genesis. The PlayStation 3, the most powerful console of the last generation, came back from all sorts of disadvantages to surpass the 360 and be competitive. What the Gamecube tried to do graphically was not a big deal. Do you honestly believe it would have made a difference if it was weaker?
Here's the bottomline. We have no idea how things will play out. If the history of the industry tells us anything it's that making a sure bet is a fool's gamble. The only thing we can say for sure is what has happened so far. How many people were so certain that by the end of this year the Wii U would be approaching 9 or 10 million? Quite a few. Why did they believe it? Because Nintendo's first-party games were going to change it all. Yet here we sit with 3 Mario games, a Zelda remake, and a Pikmin sequel and the Wii U only recently hit the number people expected it to be at 9 months ago. Some people are so quick to point to the 3DS as proof that the Wii U will turn things around yet they don't want to consider that right now this is very much looking like another Gamecube by sales. It sure as hell isn't looking like another Wii.
Numbers don't lie but numbers by themselves can't tell the whole truth either.
