it's not bundled in Japan, how can you explain that 3 million sales?

Actually, may ppl purchase wii for wii-sports

I don't understand the people early on who said there's nothing to celebrate here. Even puttign aside the pack-in argument, at this pace WiiSports is going to pass SMB in significantly less than half of the time. That's pretty damn amazing, if you ask me.

Aside from that, the game still would have done well without pack-in status, though obviously not as much so. But that doesn't matter in terms of the list, because that's not what's asked for. And, as has been said, even if we took out the games that were pack-in their whole life like WiiSports then we'd have "blemishes" like Gran Turismo 3 and Pokemon R/B/G up there. Pack-ins happen all of the time in this business, what really should matter is whether or not the company got money for the game or not (and they always do), and since WiiSports marked the price of the Wii up by $50 when it sells for $30 in Japan, I'm going to have to say that Nintendo is getting their money for it.

Okay. Let's look at the reverse. New rumour, starting here, starting now.

Nintendo is going to replace Wii Sports with Spy Game: Elevator Mission. (Actually, I'm sure there is a worse game, but this one seems to be pretty bad. Billy the Wizard, has sold 60% more in the same amount of time, and admit it... You've never even HEARD of Billy the Wizard, have you.)

Okay. Elevator Mission is the new pack-in. In fact, in an alternate time universe, it was the original pack-in. Yeah, I'm sure that SG:EM (or spgmem as it is affectionately called) would have more than its current 7.5k sales, meaning that the Wii would have more than 7.5k sales as well. But 20.6M spgmems, errr, Wiis? No way.

You may not know how to count it, since it is a pack in. But Wii Sports sold consoles. And by selling the Wii, sold itself as well.

Apparently common sense isn't as common as you would like.

A Wii Remote sits on the shelf right next to Wii Play. Even though, Wii Play is more expensive, 9.58M ignored the Wii Remote and picked up the Wii Play.

But wait, comes the cry ... it's only $5 more. Now we have to judge if a game makes a best seller list by its price too, right?

If Wii sports was sitting on a shelf next to the Wii (not combined) when it was released you would have never heard of it.

I think you could be right there. Scene: You point to a Wii when it was released. "What's that?" Friend answers "Not sure. Think it's suppose to be a new console from Nintendo. Has a game called 'spgmem' that comes with it." You "Any good?" Friend "Would you want your mother to be playing a game called 'spgmem'?" You. "Forget it."

By 'it', you did mean the Wii, right?  Millions would never have heard of it, since the Wii was seen because of TV news and talk shows.  Showing Wii sports clips.  Rarely that other 'real' game, which was Zelda:TP. 

 The best thing is that, no matter what happens, Nintendo wins!

you know people can bash the fact that its a "pack-in" all they want but nintendo was making more then the profit of a game on each console sold from the start, and if they would have sold the wii for 199 and sports for 50 there is no way it would have been as successfull

And Grey Acumen adeptly puts it into perspective.

John Lucas 

Pokemon Red/Blue as best selling game FTW. Even if this was slightly packed in for about 10% of sales, 10% of 31 million is better than 90% of whatever Wii sports sold.

It's funny, I've gotten more hours of fun with that "demo" than possibly any game I've owned. It's still the De Facto game when anyone comes over for drinks. It alone has provided enough enjoyment to make my Wii worth the cost.

Some people just want to hate.

Okay, and then subtract the number of copies sold to people buying a second (or, in Japan, a third) copy of R/B/G.