Seriously why?
Here are the sales of Metroid according to this site:
Is it because it's a single player shooter game so sales should be limited?
Maybe. Let's compare Metroid sales to another shooter series known for its single player!
And it turns out the highest saling Bioshock game is 2.5 million just like Metroid Prime! Except these game are multiplatform so you have to add all the systems together to get a better picture. And when you do that, this series has already have mutliple software that out sell Metroid's top selling game.
Okay, so the genre isn't a big deal... Maybe it's because the game has such a passive story, a lot of backtracking, and isn't entirely easy to get into for new players.
Wait that sounds like a popular series called....
Actually this series has sales quite similar to Metroid! But again we need to count the multiplatform sales to get the whole story. And Dark Souls III which only has 1.8 million sales total just released this year. It won't be too surprising to see it match the first Dark Souls 3 million sales. Something a single Metroid title has never accomplished in 30 years. This is quite disheartening for a series with games that defined a genre and rank consistently high in the greatest games of all time lists.
However, Dark Souls is actually a recent series from 2011. Discounting Other M, the last main line Metroid game came out in 2007. That was Prime 3 with 1.8 million sales according to this site. So maybe gamers might be more interested in giving Metroid a chance thanks to Dark Souls recent success?
So maybe this time in the industry is perfect for another mainline Metroid like Prime, Super, or Fusion? Or is Metroid forever doomed to sub three million sales? Is Metroid simply a classic IP that is forever niche like Castlevania and Mega Man?
