Not bad for a game that was essentially a mini game ripped from the last 3D Mario game :).

I think it will do much better than 500k lifetime....  I think it will do 380k by years end and have long legs for years.  The price helps it a lot and the boxart i think will be appealing to late wiiu adopters over the next few years.

The title should be:toad has legs...!

Funny I never thought toad was that great of a toon.

Who would have thought that C. Toad would have legs?

i hope it will hit 1mil WW at some point.... cannot wait to have it

How is 65 or 100K a great performance for a Nintendo game during Xmas period?

It's Japan,

XMAS season sales do not coïncide with Europe or the USA. USA starts peaking/rising 3rd weekend of november. Europe about a week later and Japan 2nd week of december.

ROI.

The game has little to no actual budget other than manhours in level design and a few new models and mechanics (the bosses, mostly). Everything else was built on the pre-existing toolkits of the 3DWorld engine and the Toad base design was already made without needing to tweak much of anything.

Titles don't need to be multi-million sellers to be successes, and Toad has a simple task: make some money, fill the line-up, give people something new to play and experience. (Its good experience for the developer staff too.) This is a AA-project, one that this industry has been lacking in recent years.

I could show you lots of Japanese AA games of the recent years