Super Mario Galaxy vs. Halo 3 - Which game will sell more units overall?

[nintendo_fanboy]

First of all, great read theSource, you're already saying the most important things in your original post.

Second, I very much agree with Sqrl, these are my thoughts too.

I think 10m is the lower bound for Mario, 64 is almost given and the rest depends on userbase. I have the feeling that almost everybody owning a Wii is interested in Galaxy.
First, the Nintendo fan of course, this doesn't even need an explanation.
The hardcores that bought a Wii now but didn't have a Cube and a 64 are probably the group with the smallest attach rate, but if they're really in the business, they are aware of the greatness of Mario games.
Third group are the lapsed gamers. People that had a NES or a SNES and are around thirty now. They have great memories with Mario and will buy it too.
Last group we have are the new gamers (also called casuals). Here comes the gateway effect others have mentioned. They have a Wii, they know Mario, they see advertisement, they become interested, they buy. These people can be compared to GB owners, they often didn't know anything about video gaming but bought a GB because of Tetris. And now look at sales numbers of Super Mario Land to know what I mean.

This means that the attach rate should easily be 25 %, and if sales trends continue, 18m are not that illusional.

We had a thread here some months ago with the question which games of the big three will sell the most. A majority of users voted for SSBB. I didn't understand that, Mario has such a huge potential.


Now a few words about Halo. I'm not really in Xbox sales patterns, so I can't really predict how much this game will sell. My guestimate is 8 to 9 million, meaning that it outsells the first two games but doesn't reach their attach rate because of a bigger concurence from other shooters and a more spread demographic for the 360 than the original Xbox. (For example, JRPG people will switch from PS to Xbox, but they're not buying shooters.)

And one last thing that I want to say: I find it ridiculous how some people say how hardcore Halo is and how Mario is casual. Mario Bros. was the first game that was played like modern single player games and therefore the creator of "Hardcore". Today, a lot of people think that Harcore and Mature is the same while Kiddie and Casual refers to each other. this is just a wrong believe. I don't want to say that Halo isn't Hardcore, but it's not more hardcore than SMG, and a lot of people that bought Halo are casuals.