Whch isn't the case here. Poor marketing and reviews are the real culprits.

The part you're neglecting to mention here is that those sonic games on the Wii saw an average increase in week 2 of 51.3% in Europe.  Giving an average second week of 25k.  In comparison Lost World dropped 58% second week in Europe to 4.3k sales.  For the third week the Wii sonic games ticked up to 30.5k while Lost World decreased to 4k.  Considering Chart Track shows a large drop in week 4 (3rd to 9th in the Wii U chart, Batman at 6th was around 830 sales) of at least 44% in the UK compared to VGC numbers, it doesn't look like the legs are coming anywhere close to the Wii games.

In three weeks it went from being 59% of the Wii average in Europe to only being 26%.  If a similar thing were to happen worldwide, it would bring that 1.2m down to 529k.

Sonic is not that relevant nowdays, I was always a alex kidd man myself...

People criticize companies for sending their titles out to die by releasing at the same time as other mega-titles but the companies have already done their research. It may be outdated, though. They stated long ago that releasing a game in the last three months of a year greatly improves sales. In fact, sales of games and consoles from Oct-Dec typically exceed game sales of the other nine months combined.

That's why we always see games like Rayman Origins or Beyond Good and Evil going up against the big guys. Or Gears of War 3/Uncharted releasing at the end of the year to maximize profits. Gaming media have long complained about this stating "Gamers like to play games all year around" or "Why not release games in the summer?". Only recently, with great games being delayed or with titles like Mass Effect 3 and Red Dead Redemption have companies seen that huge games can do huge numbers releasing early in the year. Still seems that most prefer to launch at the end of the year for the guaranteed sales. Someone has to lose, though.

Despite the lukewarm reviews, I think Sonic is still a big name and it will go on to sell decently.

Thats a good point, I do believe tho that if and when Wii U gets a nice holiday boost, this will be one of the games that benefits from it greatly and should see decent legs going into next year. Sonic usually does best in America so its legs there will be more important in the long term. This game should still be able to cross 1m.

Great game, frustrating at times, but actually quite nice. Where the game shines, IT REALLY SHINES. Some of the levels are the most well designed sonic levels I've seen...others eh not so much.

Worth a purchase but I'd reccomended waiting till it drops to $40 because it's a love/hate game.

To make the point, I forgot about this and only checked its meta and sales only after having read the thread.

But in the end, it comes down to Nintendo exclusivity....you don't back the horse that is allready tired out the gate