yup, its not even debatable.

You shoulde revise your title then. Plus it is a silly and abitrarily thing to say. It's as silly as titling a thread as ''What is bigger, Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter'' but then later in a post you add ''oh, we are arbitrarily only comparing the movies, so exclude the books and everything else'' making the comparaison futile.

And as I said, the sales of Mario games on DS affect in some ways the sales of games on Wii making it unfair to ignore those cause not only are they a big number but they have a impact on what you are comparing. I could repeat the NSMB example I made, but instead I'll give you a other example. I'm a huge Mario Kart fan, but only have money for 1game. I have to choose between DS and Wii but I'm on the road alot or my family usualy monopolize the TV, so I choose Mario Kart DS. If they were no Mario Kart on DS tho, I would have bought it for my Wii, meaning that the existence of Mario Kart DS (that we are ignoring in our comparison with CoD despite the sale being there) did make the Wii version lose a sale. CoD does'nt have this problem.

And if we choose to only include home consoles (wich I think is a obsolete comparison if we do it that way), one could argue by doing the math that 118million games sold across 99million consoles is a way better number than 144millions games sold across 248million consoles, therefore giving a strong argument that if Mario was on 3consoles it would have outsold CoD.

Depends, If CoD went exclusive to Sony, then I agree that M$ would lose a huge slice of their audience (altho they would probably be able to find something to replace it)

But if CoD would go exclusive to M$, I don't believe it would attract Sony's and Nintendo's audience that much. Clearly not Nintendo's for obvious reasons, and as for Sony, sure it's the most popular game on PS3, but their is so many war games outhere, they would just switch over to a other war game to fill the void instead of leaving the house of Killzone, GoW and Uncharted to name a few.

Also, ppl are extremely overestimating the lasting appeal of CoD. The game's sales are starting to drop already. I'm curious to see how they make the transition to next gen, but I doubt it will be nearly as popular. Cause new gen = new IPs = new experiences = new competitors = new fad. Also the fact that next gen = lower userbase when you consider the fact that most of CoD's userbase are teenagers who bought the game by peerpressure cause all of their friends bought the game.

Clearly you didnt read the OP.  Read the very FIRST line.  Tell me what it says.

Does'nt make the comparison any less obsolete. If you want to compare something, might as well compare it for real instead of narowly choosing a small aspect in order to make a point. If I see a thread titled ''who is bigger, Batman or Superman'' I would expect to have a debate on the whole thing, not superfluously compare their TV shows. Or it's like titling your thread ''Who is the biggest actor, Brad Pit or Neil Patrick Harris'' and then when I click I read in your post ''On TV only''.

Also does'nt adress the fact that the DS sales that you choose to ignore has a impact on home console sales.

Just wondering why did you include PC in the numbers since you said home consoles?

Another question does super smash brothers not count ? 

Also it's not that Mario is not as popular any more but rather Nintendo only produced one title in 2011 and 2012. 

Also what's the point in asking the question, which is more popular while posting total sales and basing the answer on just those numbers. It's like asking which number us greater 1 or 5. 

Guess who wins if we are talking only about games that are balanced on the end of my knob right now.. Mario with one.. NSMB2..

Cool .......... I guess.......

This list is incomplete on both sides. You ignored the CODs from the PS2, Xbox and GCN, aswell as the Mario games from 2003 (that's when COD started if I remember correctly) onwards. Also you seem to have forgot NSMBU.

In my opinion it is fair to make a differnce between home consoles and handhelds. It is very questionable if those are real substitutes.

* A console needs a TV set and there is competition for the TV-set. If someone wants to watch TV or a DVD you can't play with the console at the same time. If you have a handheld you do not need a TV set and you can play whenever you want, even on the go.
* You can play splitscreen coop with a console, but you need two handhelds to play coop.
* Handhelds do not offer the same technolical experience as consoles.
* Handhelds have a limited screensize
* Handhelds (especially from Nintendo) are often bought for Kids as entry game device. You know what I mean if you go into a department store looking for a game like Final Fantasy IV and see what other games are available...

The next thing is that CoD only covers 1 genre. CoD is surely bigger on home consoles than Mario Platformers or Mario Kart racing games.

We should also note that CoD sold that well despite quality competition... There are many high quality shooter who could take away sales from CoD. (Battlefield, Halo, Killzone, Resisance,....) while there is not much competiton for Super Mario Galaxy or Mario Kart´that could take sales away.

So in the end CoD really seems to be bigger on home consoles for me. But I did not play a single CoD game by now and I never will as I do not like Shooters. So I personally would take Mario over CoD if someone would offer me a free game. But on a neutral point of view CoD should win this fight on home consoles.