Since almost every wii owner will get galaxy and there will be more wii owners than 360's by that time, yea mario can atcualy out sell halo 3.

You guys are really overestimating Mario. Sunshine sold 6 million in its lifetime, we are talking about this year alone.

NSMB is not even the same thing as Mario Galaxy, Mario Galaxy numbers are going to be much closer to TP numbers in Japan than to NSMB numbers.

Zelda: PH will break a million and a half at most, showing again that it is not casual friendly like NSMB.

The initial base won't matter so much as lifetime base - the Halo games have had legs before, and the 360 base will be almost certainly be far larger than the Xbox's. I expect H3 to surpass H2 in sales,around 10m, but not in attach rate.

 And with 10m in sales, I doubt that MS or Bungie will give a damn about the attach rate thing. 

Completely not true. So many Wii owners bought the system for Wii Sports type games not Mario or Zelda.

On the other hand everyone who owns a 360 will get Halo 3. 

Maybe you are. I'm pretty sure TheSource meant lifetime sales.

You're predicting SMG to sell less than Sunshine in North America.

Super Mario Galaxy:

Japan- 4.5 Million

North America- 6.5 Million

Others- 4 Million

Total- 15 Million

Halo 3:

Japan- 200K

North America- 7.5 Million

Others- 2.5 Million

Total- 10.2 Million

Kind of an weird comparison considering Halo 3 is really only strong in one market and also the fact that the Wii will have a larger installed base. It would make more sense to compare SSBB to Galaxy.

 In america.. and europe to a leser degree.

But the problem is that it won't sell anything in japan, and that will make Mario the winner IMO.

Great question and fantastic post.  It was really helpful to look at all of those numbers and factors to determine my choice.

My general feel right now is that Halo has a more predictable pattern of sales than SMG could have.  I think that there is a very large chance that Halo 3 will fall somewhere between 6-10 million.  I think somewhere along the lines of 8-9 million being most realistic.  Factoring in previous sales of the two games, the price of the console and the install base I think that sounds pretty good.  

SMG, on the other hand, is a wildcard in my opion.  It could sell anywhere on the low end of 5mil [although unlikely] following the decline in sales of mario console titles, or it could be an enormous breakout title that could approach 20mil in sales lifetime like The Source seems to think.  I am leaning towards the latter slightly more.  I think a reasonable range would be 8-15 mil, much larger because there is so much more in question.  Halo 3 isn't changing a lot so it's garunteed to basically be the same goodness, but SMG is yet unproven and has a lot changed in terms of environments and such.  It will have a larger install base and could have 3 strong markets as opposed to Halo's one.  My uncertainty of crazy 18 mil numbers lie in the fact that I am really not sure if Japan will buy a console Mario like they have with the DS which is much bigger and more accessable than Wii.  I'm thinking somewhere in the realm of 12 mil as my final guess though. 

I think if SMG really takes off well with the casual market and Ninty gets plenty of consoles out there, the really interesting question will be posed of whether SMG can beat Halo in America?  If this happens in the next year or two I think the writing is on the wall that the Wii will be dominant like PS was of previous generations.

I definitely meant lifetime sales.

Don't even have a launch data for SMG in Japan or Europe - so this year isn't assumed.

...

If you want to restrict it to US & 2007 only - then it should be a real fight, probably with Halo 3 winning out (which also comes out earlier).