Yeah I definitely expected Mario Maker 2 to sell better, but at least it looks like it will hit 10 million lifetime eventually.

I think needing to take the time to make your own levels doesn't appeal to nearly as large an audience as a normal 2D Mario game. I mean hell I got Mario Maker 2, thinking I'd be making levels, tested out the level making but then realized I didn't feel like spending the time to do that. Maybe if I was still a kid and had a bunch of friends all making levels and playing each other's level that'd be one thing, but yeah its definitely a smaller audience that's interested in what is primarily viewed as a 'creator' game.

I think Nintendo could definitely do more to make Mario Maker more friendly, like I just see a lot of crazy levels and it'd be nice if there were a way to separate just the crazy designs from designs that are more trying to be a normally laid out level.

Anyway, the Mario Maker series is very cool but it just isn't going to be as popular as 2D and 3D Mario games which appeal to a wider casual audience. Mario Maker 2 isn't a failure at all, we just didn't know the audience size for the series until the Switch game came out, and now we do - audience size is about 10 million.

Live A Live is already past 500K after releasing in July:

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2022/09/live-a-live-switch-remake-sells-500k-units-worldwide

I am more impressed that animal crossing is nearly 40 million copies sold!

Yeah, there is an interesting comparison to be made with Splatoon.  Both Mario Maker and Splatoon were brand new series starting on the Wii U.  Both got a Switch sequel.  Both started with free online play in the first game, and both required payed online to access all features in the sequels.  Obviously they are very different games, but it is interesting that they have so many similarities.  To the numbers:

Mario Maker - 4.02 million on Wii U, 7th place on the console
Splatoon - 4.95 million on Wii U, 6th place on the console

Mario Maker 2 - 7.89 million on Switch, 17th place on the console
Splatoon 2 - 13.3 million on Switch, 12th place on the console

That is a 96.3% increase for Mario Maker, and a 168.7% increase for Splatoon.  Not bad for Mario Maker 2, but Splatoon had really impressive growth.

Someone previously mentioned New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe only launching 6 months before Mario Maker 2, and it is certainly possible that ate some sales.  Those games were about 3 years apart on the Wii U.  I'm just kind of curious now, so let's look at more numbers.

New Super Mario Bros U - 5.82 million on Wii U, 3rd place
New Super Luigi U - 3.07 million on Wii U, 8th place
New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe - 13.31 million on Switch, 11th place
This is a 128.7% increase if we go from base NSMBU to the Deluxe version.

Let's look at some other games that are roughly comparable.  Some ports, some sequels.

Super Mario 3D World - 5.88 million on Wii U, 2nd place
Super Mario 3D World + Bower's Fury - 9.43 million on Switch, 15th place
This is a 60.4% increase.

Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze - 2.02 million on Wii U, 11th place
Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze - 4.12 million on Switch, 25th place
This is a 104% increase.

Yoshi's Woolly World - 1.57 million on Wii U, 14th place
Yoshi's Crafted World - 3.01 million on Switch, 35th place
91.7% increase

Pikmin 3 - 1.27 million on Wii U, 17th place
Pikmin 3 Deluxe - 2.23 million on Switch, 41st place
75.6% increase

Captain Toad Treasure Tracker - 1.37 million on Wii U, 16th place
Captain Toad Treasure Tracker - 2.13 million on Switch, 42nd place
55.5% increase

Then there are these outliers.

Smash - 5.38 million on Wii U, 4th place
Smash - 28.82 million on Switch, 3rd place
435.7% increase

Kart - 8.46 million on Wii U, 1st place
Kart - 46.82 million on Switch, 1st place
453.4% increase

Splatoon 2 got way more support through updates and other stuff. It having more growth than SMM2 from the previous game is not that surprising.

Nice breakdown, so based on this it did similar to other Wii U sequels/updated ports (excluding Smash/Kart)

range: 55.5-168.7

average-97.6

Mario Maker-96.3

Is there a list anywhere of third party million sellers on Switch?
I know 13 non-Nintendo games in FY2022 sold over a million, and 15 in FY2021, but has anywhere bothered to consolidate them?

We don't know which games those are and we'll never know. We can only speculate.

Fifa, Just Dance etc. Stuff like that is probably always there.

All the officially reported 3rd party million sellers are listed on here (most of them never sold 1mil in a single fiscal year):

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Nintendo_Switch_video_games

The Witcher 3 also is a million seller and Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate is too but Capcom only reported the combined sales with the 3DS version.

Despite FOMO being a real thing, 3D All-Stars would've hit 10 million (at least) if it was a standard release. 15 million would've been somewhat possible as well, despite the mediocrity of the presentation and full price. 

I wonder if Nintendo will make a limited Mario or Zelda collection for their 40th anniversaries later this decade. 

To the OP and anyone else in this thread, is there a handy list of how many million sellers were published by Nintendo on each platform? I imagine the Wii and DS each have a lot. 

https://www.installbaseforum.com/forums/threads/nintendo-software-and-hardware-sales-data-from-1983-to-present.170/