I will ignore your essay about BOTW 2 sales because I said 8 million and you quoted me with 15 million, the double of the number I stated as a disappointment. I'm fully aware of how Zelda sales behaves, you don't need to teach me 

Ok, so after BOTW expecting a 2D Zelda to sell 2-3 million more than it used to is a "silly" expectation? How so? The IP is many times more popular now, I was expecting the sales for spin offs to increasing accordingly. Ok, I will grant you it was indeed a silly expectation because my lack of understand that people who liked BOTW has no interest in 2D Zelda;

People here are having a lot of silly expectation for Metroid Dread to sell 4, 5 million copies as well based on absolutely nothing, but nobody here was called out for that, funny right? People here are ignoring the fundamental truth: Some games just have more appeal than others. How many 2D metroidvanias sold 3 million in a single SKU? How many times a 2D Metroid surpassed 3 million?

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Now backing to the topic that spike this whole discussion: Some people (like myself), believe:

a) Smaller price leads to higher sales (Fundamental market truth for almost all kind of products)

b) Dread has a standard price tag, data show us most of Nintendo B-list games stop selling after some time because the high price trag 

c) Dread (any non-evergreen Nintendo game for that matter) would sell better if the price was lower

d) Nintendo won't price cut Metroid because they keep their prices the standard

---->>> And thus, our forecast is 2 million give or take


Let's ignore all tangencial topics used to divert my attention. Do you disagree with one of those claims? Do you disagree with my sales prediction?

If you don't, I see no point in prolonging this discussion 

The only other 2D Zelda game that ever sold over 5mil copies in a single sku is the original The Legend of Zelda, all others sold below that. These sales for Link's Awakening aren't disappointing, they are huge and show how BotW has grown the franchise.

Is that really so? I mean, the range of increase for Link's Awakening is more in line with ones likes Xenoblade, Pikmin and Fire Emblem (30-40% increase over the best selling iteration). Seems a natural progress of Nintendo IPs on Switch, rather than a push coming from BOTW

BOTW is on its run to sell about 4 times more than any other 3D Zelda. One game that absolutely was "pushed" by BOTW is Age of Calamity, in only few months it far outsold all other entries combined (3.7 million vs 2.2 million of everything else combined, VG Chartz data)

For Link's Awakening the push seems much less pronounced for me. BOTW is just too different from LA to warrant similar interest of people who only like BOTW

People also expected PS4 to become the best selling console of all time, are it's real sales now disappointing then it doesn't do it? There is a difference between outlandish wishes to perform well, that can be handled as such, but expectation built to the end to say sales were disappointing. Maybe you expected more of Link's Awakening. Fine. But that doesn't make it's sales disappointing. Because it still sold more than the original game, which is crazy.

Bold: you would say the same thing about Zelda and Smash selling 20 or 30+ million, Animal Crossing selling 30 or 40+ million and Luigi's Mansion and Mario Party selling 10+ million. 3mil isn't a huge jump over the previously best selling 2D Metroid. Other franchises had way bigger growth relative to the rest of the franchise.

Bold 2: that isn't totally wrong, but said Nintendo B-list games just aren't updated by Nintendo in their quarterly reports. Obviously they sell less, but that doesn't mean Metroid Dread is not going to move another 0.5-1mil copies after Nintendo stops updating themselves. Several games crossed the 3mil mark 2+ years after their launch. Metroid Dread surely can do so 4+ years after it's launch.

A remake managed to sell way more than the original game and is going to be the best selling 2D Zelda game while doing so at full price, the same price that BotW is sold for and you find it disappointing because it didn't sell 4 times what the original sold?

You're being ridiculous. The only game on the Switch that sold disappointing imo is Pokèmon Mystery Dungeon Rescue Team DX.

Metroid Dread won't disappoint. If a remake of a 2D Zelda game can outsell all others at full price, while BotW offers 10 times the possible playtime at the same price, why would the price be a big hindrance for Metroid Dread to sell 3mil.

I think I have to say something about this too:

a) This is often assumed, but in reality the picture is more complicated. Basically if people want X, they have a price Y that they are willing to pay. If the price is above Y they abstain, if it is below, they get it. Now, not everyone has the same price idea, but there is some distribution, usually a normal distribution. So there is a region of prices close to each other, that is the threshold for many people at once. Cutting the price inside this region does a lot for sales. But if you are outside that region, it doesn't do a lot.

We can see that. There are price-cuts that do basically nothing for sales. Many games get pricecuts after initial sales, still initially they moved the most. So the question if a price cut works is really a question about the distribution of potential customers on the price-expectation curve.

Now, other factors also influence sales obviously. You claim, that being 2D reduces sales or moves the price-expectation curve. Without proof actually. If we look at Metroid sales in the past, we can see, that the initial 2D Metroid and the initial 3D Metroid (Metroid Prime) sold substantially more than later entries in their series. Metroid Prime sold similar to the original Metroid, about 100K more. Every other Metroid Prime title sold less than every 2D mainline Metroid. Yes: the 3D-entries sold *less*, not more. So your claim, that being 2D will hold back Metroids sales are completely unfounded, historical data seems to point in a different direction.

Actually we see this with other series too. Mario Odyssey has absolutely great sales, but do you know which Marios sold even more? New Super Mario Bros, NSMB Wii and the original Super Mario Bros. Yes, Mario Odyssey was only outsold by 2D-entries. The claim that people see lower value in 2D-entries doesn't hold if confronted with sales data.

b) Because of the price-tag? How well does the price-cutting help sales of non-Nintendo games? Do you have data, that they sold on better legs than Nintendo's B-tier because of price-cuts? This seems like an unfounded claim.

c) Again, an unfounded claim.

d) Yeah, they do. Still often have better legs than many non-Nintendo games. Although I think the legs of a game depend more on it's genre than being Nintendo or not. Minecraft has great legs.

I agree with your conclusion about the 2 million sales. That is a reasonable expectation. But I disagree, that the sales could be substantially higher than that with a lower price-tag. In reality this seems to be the size of the Metroidvania-niche. Ori is reported to sold 2 million. Castlevania seems to have a sales ceiling of 1.4 million. MegaMan one of 1.5 million. Bloodstained sold past 1 million copies. Hollow Knight sold absolute bonkers 2.8 million, in line with the original Metroid. So yes, 1-2 million seems a normal for a Metroidvania, 3 million seems to be a ceiling only few entries came close, including the original Metroid and Hollow Knight. But it seems price doesn't influence this result. Because these games in question have very differing prices. Quality though does. We still have to see how Metroid Dread lands on the quality scale, although looking at the trailer it seems good. But if the game has for instance frame-rate issues or some gameplay issues, that might hold back sales far more than 2D or the price.

Also, you said (about Link's Awakening):

"Ok, I will grant you it was indeed a silly expectation because my lack of understand that people who liked BOTW has no interest in 2D Zelda;"

No, the fact that LA was a remake instead of a new game has nothing to do with it. It is all about 2D vs. 3D. Also BOITW has outsold also every 3D-entry. That is because BOTW is an amazing and outstanding game, nothing else.

"How many 2D metroidvanias sold 3 million in a single SKU? How many times a 2D Metroid surpassed 3 million?"

I listed it above: no Metroidvania has sold past 3 million ever. And no 2D Metroid. But you know what: also no 3D Metroid surpassed 3 million. As I showed above, 2D Metroids sell better than 3D ones, and 2D Marios sell better than 3D ones. So maybe Nintendo should sell Metroid Prime 4 at a budget price. As obviously people do like 2D more than 3D and are more willing to buy 2D games (at least in platformers).

I think it can do 2.5-3M with the help of the Switch's popularity, good word of mouth and some decent marketing, I don't think the price would be a big obstacle to reach this number.

For those complaining about prices, it's important to look at inflation

Source: https://techraptor.net/gaming/features/cost-of-gaming-since-1970s

In 1990 average game cost was $60. If you adjust for inflation that would be $121.60.

Super Metroid sold roughly 1.42 million copies at a value of $121.60 a piece, by today's standards. That would be a total of $172,672,000 revenue adjusting for inflation. We can't know profit as Nintendo isn't that specific with reporting data, so all we are left with to look at is revenue. To generate that same level of revenue now, at $60 each, they would need to sell 2,877,866 copies. They would basically have to sell twice as much as they did in 1994 with Super Metroid to generate the same level of revenue at $60 each, which is absurd by itself. Now, for those of you wanting the game to be priced at $40 each (a whopping $81.60 less in value than they sold Super Metroid for in 1994), they would have to sell 4,316,800 games just to have the same revenue generated as Super Metroid did. Now, what about development? Some estimates are that cost of development has gone up 200-300% since the early days of gaming, all while the price hasn't gone up hardly any. More digital sales offset costs that would have otherwise been spent on boxing/shipping/manufacturing, but that doesn't put much of a dent in the loss in revenue companies are making now by selling the same amounts as they did decades ago.

This is all true, but it should be self-evident that the market wasn't going to always have the same return on investment it once had, especially when said investment consisted mostly on churning out short arcade titles with artificial difficulty so kids wouldn't beat it in half an hour. I'd say Super Metroid itself was already an example, back in the early-to-mid-nineties, of a game that increased in quality and length (and development costs) in order to stand out as the market became more saturated and demanding.

I think when the arcade-like Saturn died while the PlayStation became dominant with the first "AAA" games such as FFVII etc. that kind of proved that was no going back to the early golden days of low-hanging fruits. And that, as we know, was the absolute norm until development tools and distribution costs fell enough for indie games to become a relevant thing, but you still can't build a platform around it.

On the flip side the market is much larger, so it's not all that bad.