I was listening to people talking about which Nintendo series would be more popular for Western audiences when I began wondering about something: where are certain Nintendo series the most popular? Sure, we all know the sales numbers for a bunch of games, or can simpoy look them up, but which series are the most ddisproportionately represented in which places?

For this study, I used a total of 36 Nintendo "series." Note that some series can be considered portions of larger series (ex. Wii Fit) or include multiple smaller series (ex. Mario RPG's). I also used information starting with 6th generation platforms, since that covers a bit over a decade of releases, including Nintendo at some highs and lows, and this is where VGChartz data becomes much more reliable.

The series were: Advance Wars, Animal Crossing, Art Academy, Big Brain, Brain Age, Donkey Kong, Endless Ocean, Fire Emblem, F-Zero, Golden Sun, Kirby, Luigi's Mansion, Mario Kart, Mario Party, Mario RPG's, Mario Sports, Metroid, Nintendogs, Pikmin, Pokemon (Core Series), Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, Pokemon Ranger, Pokemon (Other), Rhythm Heaven, Star Fox, Style Savvy Super Mario (2D), Super Mario (3D), Super Smash Bros, Wario, Wii, Wii Fit, Wii Play, Wii Sports, Xenoblade, and Zelda.

What I discovered was:

• These series, on average, sell 44% of their games in North America, 25% in Europe, and 24% in Japan.
• In North America, the disproportionately Most Popular series are Advance Wars, Metroid, Star Fox, Zelda, Super Smash Bros, and Mario RPG's. In each of these cases, over 54% of a series' sales came from North America alone. Of particular note is Advance Wars; over 70% of Advance Wars games ever sold were in North America. Likewise, just under two thirds of Metroid sales come from North America. Other series represented, including Zelda, Super Smash Bros, and Star Fox, are traditionally considered to be some of Nintendo's premiere "hardcore" games by fans.
• In North America, the disproportionately Least Popular series are Rhythm Heaven, Brain Age, Art Academy, Style Savvy, Big Brain, and Animal Crossing. In each of these cases, under 30% of a series' sales came from North America alone.  Rhythm Heaven sells under 1/7 of its copies in North America, and Brain Age under a quarter.
• In Europe, the disproportionately Most Popular series are Art Academy, Big Brain, Nintendogs, Brain Age, Wii Fit, and Wii Sports. In each of these cases, over 34% of worldwide sales came from Europe alone. That's right, Europe is Nintendo's casual land! Note that Art Academy in particular sold over 57% of its games in Europe.
• In Europe, the disproportionately Least Popular series are Kirby, Rhythm Heaven, Mario RPG's, Fire Emblem, Pikmin, and Pokemon Ranger. In each of these cases, under 16% of the series's sales came from Europe. Kirby in particular has well under 5% of its sales in Europe, to the extent where I suspect VGChartz is not tracking sales there or something.
• In Japan, the disproportionately Most Popular series are Rhythm Heaven, Style Savvy, Fire Emblem, Animal Crossing, Kirby, and Wario. In each of these cases, Japan accounts for over 40% of total sales. Rhythm Heaven in particular sells about 2/3 of its copies in Japan, even discounting the 2006 GBA title. Surprisingly, the strange Wario series is quite popular in Japan, despite being seen as an American influenced character by some.
• In Japan, the disproportionately Least Popular seriesare Advance Wars, the Wii Brand (Particularly Play and Sports), Metroid, and Nintendogs. In each of these cases, Japan accounts for under 10% of a series's total sales. Advance Wars is likely at the bottom due to poor tracking by VGChartz, but the weakness of the Wii Sports brand can at least partially be associated with the lack of bundling. Meanwhile, Metroid simply hasn't been popular in Japan since the SNES. No post-1994 Metroid title has reached 200,000 sales in the country, although 2002's Fusion came fairly close.
• The following series were neither excpetionally weak or strong in any territory: . This does NOT mean that any of these series are particularly strong or weak in any region: merely that they have fairly universal appeal.

What does this mean? Here's what I think:

• The West, despite what some say, is far from unified. America and Europe seem to desire and reject different games from Nintendo. Therefore, the entire World outside of Japan should not be treated as a single entity.
• North America seemingly contains the most avid consumers of Nintendo's non-RPG hardcore fare,while largely rejecting more casual games.
• Europe is where Nintendo's casual strategy has been most successful proportionately, while more in depth games that include strategy and/or RPG elements are left out. As for Kirby... your guess is as good as mine.
• Japan has a mix of casual and hardcore series doing fairly well. Likewise, less loved games include both the casual Wii and Nintendogs games and the more hardcore Metroid and Zelda. Nintendo may be releasing the wrong games for general demographics elsewhere, but in Japan, it seems Nintendo has a good mix of casual and core series.
• In general, the main franchise that is not disproportionately weak anywhere is Mario, save for his RPG's. Super Mario in 2D, Luigi's Mansion, Mario Party, and Mario Sports games have international appeal. Even Donkey Kong can be considered related to Mario.

In conclusion, the best mix of games for Nintendo to make to appeal to a worldwide audience would be a mixture of the above games and series that are so popular, a limited lack of popularity in a region is compensated for. Therefore, the following games would be good ideas to, say, improve the Wii U's sales:

• 2D Mario Done Already, best-selling game on the system
• Luigi's Mansion Just Completed for the 3DS
• Mario Party
• Mario Sports
• Donkey Kong Coming in a few days
• Super Smash Bros Coming later this year
• Wii Fit Done already with Nintendo Land, Wii Party U, Wii Fit U
• Zelda Two games on the way, one of which seems likely to improve the series reputation in Japan

So really, Nintendo has been hitting all the right marks with their Wii U lineup, and is continuing to do so into 2014 and beyond. The only things missing are more Mario spinoffs, something that I never thought I'd say.

Wow. Nintendo is apparently not as stupid as I thought.

Other Observations

• Xenoblade did decently worldwide, but most surprisingly well in Europe. This is despite Europe's seemingly being apathetic to Nintendo's less casual games.
• Mario Sports is a bit of a misnomer, simply because depending on the sport, the game will do very differently in different regions. The mixture represented here includes Basketball, Baseball, Tennis, Golf, and Soccer/Football, but NOT the Olympic crossovers.
• Zelda is far from a weak series in Japan. In fact, it's more of a moderately large series. It's just overshadowed by properly large series such as Animal Crossing and Mario Kart and Huge series like Pokemon.
• Likewise, Animal Crossing is not a weak brand in Ameirca either. It sells well over 1.5 million copies per entry. It's just that this compares to even other casual games. The Wii Sports duo alone sold over 56 million thanks to bundling here!
• I jokingly described Europe as a Casual Place, but to be fair, they are fans of Xenoblade. So that makes up for it in my book.
• The six biggest Nintendo brands of the 21st Century are, in rough descending order: Mario, Wii, Pokemon, Zelda, Brain Age, and Nintendogs.
• Despite its reputation, Smash Bros has sold less than Donkey Kong from the 6th generation onward, even before the release of Tropical Freeze. That would be the spinoffs and handheld ports doing the work.
• Pokemon Mystery Dungeon > Metroid. Sorry guys.

tl;dr Nintendo's different franchises work differently in different regions, and the games coming for the Wii U in 2014 corelate with games that do well worldwide.

Edit #1:

Chart Ahoy!

Edit #2

Some Data on other Nintendo series added. Some of these are further subdivisions, others are somehow overlooked in the original table. I'll incorporate It into the main table tomorrow, but for now, here it is.

Edit #3

Edit #2 better incorporated into main graph. New text blurbs as necessary

Any thoughts?

How can people not like Kirby? Its soo damn cute and deadly, its like a pink ball of death and sucking!!!

But damn, this is an awesome thread that I had no idea about... Maybe Nintendo isn't just consistently fapping to Peach in her cat custom after all and actually knows what they are doing... Here's hopes for a great 2014!!

Also, Japan doesn't like Zelda? WTF

Wait... WAIT!

Europe doesn't like Fire Emblem, Kirby and Mario RPG's?

Damn it... I was born on the wrong continent.

Btw. that's some fancy research you did there, well done

Nice research. All I can say is cheers to 2014!

Anybody interested in seeing the exact tables I used?

This is a fascinating discovery! Seriously good work!

Everyone loves Kirby, its just that his games suck =P

and its not that Japan dont like Zelda but Japan is the smaller market so its garenteed less sales. It dosent help that Zelda is a beast in NA where in Japan its a solid seller but nothing more

I'm pretty sure in the case of Fire Emblem it can be explained with lack of localization for the earlier titles. So the series never built any big fanbase here. Maybe it is the same for Kirby and Mario RPGs, not so sure here.

Also love the Europe=Casuals thing =P
Pretty sure Europe just have zero fucks to give for Nintendo and so everything is skewed towards that one successful generation. They can pump out all the casual games they want but the market has seemingly moved on to tablets and smartphones

Nice work btw

yeah, you're probably right about that. It's just a shame that so many people never got to play the original fire emblem gems.

As for the *newer* installments of Mario RPG's... I don't know what's going on. Bad taste in gaming maybe. Fifa and Call of Battlefield: VIII are dominating here