HigHurtenflurst said:
Certainly without bundling some of those games would not have reached such heights, but some of the biggest offenders (SMB & Wii Sports) were integral to the consoles success so discounting the games entirely makes no sense (they are clearly very popular games that most of the owners enjoyed)
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They are discounted to me because they were not sold commercially, they were provided wether the buyer of the console wanted them or not, as such theres no logical scale of gauging whether or not said game would have been as popular if you had to go out and pay retail for it.
same goes for the bundling of super mario, its easily to take the final sales tallies and say "that was one third the install base", but those sales were reached with the bundling in place, as such talk and popularity of the game overseas would impact coverage and level of discussion of the title, bolstering sales overseas.
essentially the bundling ensuring every unit sold was a game sold tainted the waters for the same title overseas and contributed to demand for a game artificially lifted by the bundling.
they did it for several other platforms with mario games too, and this i feel is the signature marketing move my nintendo when establishing a console, every nintendo console that launches with a bundled game, even if said bundles game is region specific, ends up with that game at the very top, or close to the top of that platforms sales, thus when a new version or sequel is released, demand for that title is artifically high, as people who would otherwise not have paid retail for the game, end up playing it regardless, and some of those would end up buying the newer version.
its a smart move by nintendo, of course, but it makes accurately judging performance of these titles virtually impossible.
Heavilly bundled titles should not be listed, or at the very least, be marked as such.
