lucidium said:
And nintendopie, if combining same game across platforms is a no go, why is combining pokemon titles? |
In both Europe and Japan Mario Bros sold to over 1/3rd of the install base, 1/3rd of the North American install base is over 11 million... add the 11.5 million from EU/JP etc and you get 22.5 million. Right in the middle of the 20-25 million estimate (though withdreday using the word "eclipsed" makes things a little confusing as you don't tend to eclipse a range, perhaps he meant more than 25 million but I am not sure... your own assumption that it would only have sold 1 million in America without the bundle is further from what would have been realistic though)
I do agree these kind of comparisons are unfair for a number of reasons though... certainly when compiling a list like this multi-platform titles should not be excluded if someone wants to claim "best selling games" with no addendum. However the counter-argumentors like yourself often try to downplay the success of the bundled Nintendo games too far. Certainly without bundling some of those games would not have reached such heights, but some of the biggest offenders (SMB & Wii Sports) were integral to the consoles success so discounting the games entirely makes no sense (they are clearly very popular games that most of the owners enjoyed)
Looking down that list, The theoretical sales of Wii Sports without being bundled are very difficult to speculate on. If it was never a bundle in US/EU and simply released full price at launch, I am certain it would have attained 10 million easily, and probably lain in the 15-20 million range.... If it had released worldwide the same as it did in Japan (bundled with a Wii remote like Wii Play) then I would guesstimate 30-35 million. In both cases though I suspect the Wii itself would be 10-20 million units poorer today.
- Super Mario Bros, I already mentioned... without bundling I think it still would have managed 35-40% of WW NES sales (in this case though I don't think the NES unit sales would have been as impacted.
- Mario Kart Wii & Wii Sports Resort had already sold 25 million each before they were bundled with the console, and were still going strong (bundling in this case was an effort to keep people interested in the console, rather than trying to push a game). At most they might be 5 million less than now.
- The various Pokemon iterations I can't speculate on personally as I don't care for it... I don't believe the number of people who buy both versions would be that high, after all isn't the only real difference the type of pokemon you start with? (then again people did get really obsessed with it in the late 90s, so perhaps I am wrong)
- Tetris is where things get properly messy, as based on PAL/JP sales I think you could probably shave off 20+ million from Americas
- Wii Play naturally would have failed as a full price game, it may have limped to 10 million as a normal budget game (£20 or $30 is I think the usual budget RRP)
- Nintendogs I can't really speculate on... it became a new tamagotchi in a way, but certainly had both the bundling and multiple-version thing going for it (I do feel it neccessary at this point to mention that Wii Sports, SMB/Duck Hunt & Tetris are the only bundles I mentioned so far forced upon console owners) I don't really think sales of this would be affected considerably without bundles.
