People often make this argument for WiiU, but it doesn't make sense to me. I mean, how can you say that "the real system movers" are still far off? There is no video game that is more of a system mover than Super Mario. If anything's going to get a console to sell, it's Mario. I don't see how you can expect other games to pick up the slack when the WiiU is already launching with what will definitely be one of its biggest games.

It's fine if you don't expect WiiU to do that well overall, but expecting a slow start when it's launching with 2D Mario seems absurd.

Anyway, on topic, this is actually an interesting thing to note, but I don't believe it's going to be necessarily relevant. Even if the price for Mario+Console is higher than usual, I don't think that's going to drive too many customers away during the holidays.

I admit I'm biased, 2D Mario games are like the least interesting things in gaming to me, so part of that was me thinking about what games I would buy if I picked up a Wii U at launch.  Mario wouldn't even be in that picture.  Still, will people rush out to buy yet another Mario game?  Didn't one just come out?

I still think a lot of people are going to wait until the library builds.  

That's worse than anecdotal evidence, :P. You're basically extrapolating upon your personal preference. Now, I personally don't find any of the PS2's games interesting or worth buying the console for, but that doesn't mean that there aren't ~160m people who disagree. We have to work with what we know people like, not what we like.

Also, there's no real evidence for a Mario game having been released recently negatively affecting this new one's sales. In fact - and this is what happened all the time on Wii and DS with NSMB, Mario Kart, etc. - people who buy the 3DS version may end up wanting the WiiU game, looking for more Mario.

People often make this argument for WiiU, but it doesn't make sense to me. I mean, how can you say that "the real system movers" are still far off? There is no video game that is more of a system mover than Super Mario. If anything's going to get a console to sell, it's Mario. I don't see how you can expect other games to pick up the slack when the WiiU is already launching with what will definitely be one of its biggest games.