If that is true it's awesome!! This game deserved to sell at least one million, as well as pikmin 3. It's a shame both games haven't sold at least 2 million. Amazing games.
I couldn't finish DK, it's too difficult for me, but still a great game! I would recommend it to everyone.

Your not looking at the entire picture. 

DK Returns first Year sold between 3.5mil-4mil (2 months) and 2 years (well 14months including 2 holidays) over 5mil. this on the Wii

DK TF sold 1.12mil in its first year (11 months) on a 9.2mil-9.3mil userbase. Sold about 30% of DK Returns, thats not bad at all. 

And DK TF gonna outsell every Metroid Game aside from 2, so..... :0

Hope Nintendo doesn't see it as a flop and we`ll have to wait 15 years to get another one...

My favourite game on the system hands down, now i need me some Freedom Planet action.

That's the thing though; those saying it would sell 3-5 million, or even 6 million, were the ones not looking at the big picture. We realized that the installed base would never be big enough for those numbers without a historical attach rate.
So, technically, we were among the only ones who did see the big picture.

K.O.

I don't know who thought dk was going to sell that much at that time especially with wiiu being about 6mil when the game released?  (4mil+).

That said these figures are end of 2014 so the game might land between 1.5mil to 2mil which I think most predictions were around the 2mil mark. 

I need to see if I can find the old threads for the games predictions. I hope I didn't say 3mil lol

?  What? O.o

Find these people pls

I had these old threads in my bookmarks but I bought a new rig and Win + browser and everything is new. Let's just say that no one agreed with 1.5 million lifetime, there were even quite a few who believed that 1 million in Japan alone was a lock as I remember.
Doesn't matter though; the biggest titles on the Wii U have performed really well and Splatoon was a proper sleeper hit!

Talking about Splatoon, it's almost outselling DK 3:1. Impressive.