So I was just browsing the site and decided to look up sales for mario games and they were impressive. Then I look at another nintendo franchise that I like which is metroid and it's sales are no where near marios? Why is this? They are both old Nintendo franchises yet mario is so much more popular with the market. Hell even its spin off games do rather well too.

Wii

Super Mario Galaxy 2-7.03 mil

Mario Sports mix-2.08 mil

GC

Super Mario Sunshine-6.31 mil

Mario Power Tennis-1.22 mil

Wii

Metroid Prime 3 Corruption-1.65 mil

Other M-1.21 mil

GC

Metroid Prime-2.82 mil

Prime 2-1.33 mil

Metroid suffers from the metroid curse - that is every metroid game (except Metroid Prime) doesn't sell well because of timing and circumstances, etc. etc.

Mario is for everyone. Mario has many, many genres. Mario is a household name. Sadly, Samus isn't.

Its not Nintendo. Its that Mario is a family friendly character. He appeals both to young and old. Theres aspects of cuteness and classic on him (beeing a mustached plumber, aka modest job and funny figure always after the fairy tale of a princess. People can indentify with him more easily than they would the big muscled badass type.). Its simple but its extremely effective as it seems to impact a broad spectrum of the consumer effectively.

Ya thats true, but it's still sad that a great franchise like metroid can't even beat out some random sport spin off.

Because its titles are always quality and Nintendo are always putting theur ideas into the Mario universe. The Mario universe is the most expanded franchise.

The downside is that instead of putting these ideas into new franchises, they always seem to put Mario in the mix or 1 of their other franchises like how they did with Starfox Adventures and Kirby Epic Yarn.

But yea Nintendo did a great job with the Mario franchise

Mario can be played and enjoyed by many different type of people. Hardcores, causuals. And encumbers multiple genres. While Metroid has a much more smaller range. It's half Zelda, FPS, and an adventure story. It's also limited because it starts at Teen rating. It can't cross into COD. Because it's not a full FPS. And it's not a full RPG story like Zelda. Cutting out people. Samus can also be viewed as confusing to people who know nothing about Metroid. While Mario has no centralized drama story. Then you have the perception to how people view Samus. Which hampers sales. Some don't like FPS Samus. Others hate whinny Samus.

I agree - Metroid Prime is my absolute favourite franchise and I wish more people could have experienced it. Metroid games are great.

Ya tell me about it. I still remember when my cousins would come over and we both decided to play split screen on prime 2 on the gc. It was just tons of fun.

Simply the right game at the right time in history. Could've just as easily been Metroid or many other IPs, but I really like Mario.

The mustache...

Without his mustache Mario would be nowhere..