I agree it's lifetime that matters, but a good chuck is sold initially, that'll be much lower than Halo 2 hurting lifetime sales.  Also, due to the fact that Halo isn't fresh anymore, and has much increased competition in the fps field, it won't have the kind of legs Halo or Halo 2 had. Even GoW2 will cut into it's sales.

Someone will come out with a truly next-gen shooter on 360 which will make Halo 3 seem dated in comparison. 

Halo 3 will outsell SMG in America, at least initially, but SMG will definately outsell it world-wide and probably in the Americas over time. 

I don't understand Ckmlb's point about it not being casual enough. Mario is the one video game title everybody knows. Casual gamers will lap it up, even they know the reputation of a Mario game's quality.

It will also have much better legs than Halo, much of this due to the Wii having better legs than the 360. But also because there isn't a real rival to a Mario platformer, there will be a number of Halo 3 rivals, probably including Halo 4 as well if they do it.

Wasnn't Halo regarded as being better than it's sequel? I can't remember, although it is something I've heard people say.

Hrmmmm... It's a hard call, Halo's wide spread appeal is unquestionable while most of the general public hasn't even heard of Super Mario Galaxy yet so I'd have to default with Halo being the larger of the two.

To adress questions regarding Ckmlb's comments, he was partially making a jab at the Wii by attributing the bulk of its sales to grannies and toddlers. He does however bring up an interesting point though irregardless his arguable intent as to whether or not Super Mario Galaxy can experience the same success as lifestyle games such as Wii Fit, Wii Play and Wii Sports. However for him to actually buy into the argument he's suggesting here it would require him to actually acknowledge Mario as being too "Hardcore" for grandma so we can assume his comment was largely a roundabout insult or at best prudent skepticism. Still, all he offered was a prediction and his opinion, and he raises a valid argument in doing so, so we can't exactly cruxify him for that.

You said after this post that you were talking about this year alone (2007)... There is no way in hell that Halo 3 is going to sell 8,000,000 copies in America alone...The install base in America is at 7 million at the moment. Halo 3 would need to have an incredibly high attach rate to reach those kind of numbers.

I predict the sales to be like this:

Super Mario Galaxy: 11 million
Halo 3: 5.5 million

And here's why... The 360 hasn't been selling so great as of late, we all know this, we watch the results every day ;). I expect that 360 sales will follow the original Xbox's sales meaning around a 25 million install base. There are too many problems surrounding the system and the people at Microsoft in charge of the box and this is leading to mainstream negative press towards the box. Not as many people are into FPS's on the Xbox as many people seem to think on here. Sure they sell well, but they've been selling to the same crowd since release. You'll find that the same people who bought Gears are the one's who most likely will get Halo 3, gears has sold well but not EVERYONE who owns a 360 got that game.

Keep an eye out for the Insider Trading allegations, we're going to see this hit the mainstream press real soon. This won't go over so well with the working man.

Also, a few of those Halo 2 sales were Halo 2 played on the 360, Halo 3 probably won't get that boost as Microsoft's future in the console market is not a sure bet.

I don't see how some of you guys think Mario will double the sales of GTA: SA. Am i missing some sort of data you guys are drawing from or am i just crazy, The PS2 even with all its sales never had a game reach 15mil and you guys have the new mario going 30mil, Mario 64(12mil sales) was something that was never done before, it had a true 3D world and was one of the games that set the 64 above what was brought to us before, This game was something like Goldeneye, it changed a generation of games and gamers, i can see no way the new Mario will even come close to GTA: SA sales let alone double them. Maybe peak at 12mil max but nothing more.

First of all, great read theSource, you're already saying the most important things in your original post.

Second, I very much agree with Sqrl, these are my thoughts too.

I think 10m is the lower bound for Mario, 64 is almost given and the rest depends on userbase. I have the feeling that almost everybody owning a Wii is interested in Galaxy.
First, the Nintendo fan of course, this doesn't even need an explanation.
The hardcores that bought a Wii now but didn't have a Cube and a 64 are probably the group with the smallest attach rate, but if they're really in the business, they are aware of the greatness of Mario games.
Third group are the lapsed gamers. People that had a NES or a SNES and are around thirty now. They have great memories with Mario and will buy it too.
Last group we have are the new gamers (also called casuals). Here comes the gateway effect others have mentioned. They have a Wii, they know Mario, they see advertisement, they become interested, they buy. These people can be compared to GB owners, they often didn't know anything about video gaming but bought a GB because of Tetris. And now look at sales numbers of Super Mario Land to know what I mean.

This means that the attach rate should easily be 25 %, and if sales trends continue, 18m are not that illusional.

We had a thread here some months ago with the question which games of the big three will sell the most. A majority of users voted for SSBB. I didn't understand that, Mario has such a huge potential.


Now a few words about Halo. I'm not really in Xbox sales patterns, so I can't really predict how much this game will sell. My guestimate is 8 to 9 million, meaning that it outsells the first two games but doesn't reach their attach rate because of a bigger concurence from other shooters and a more spread demographic for the 360 than the original Xbox. (For example, JRPG people will switch from PS to Xbox, but they're not buying shooters.)

And one last thing that I want to say: I find it ridiculous how some people say how hardcore Halo is and how Mario is casual. Mario Bros. was the first game that was played like modern single player games and therefore the creator of "Hardcore". Today, a lot of people think that Harcore and Mature is the same while Kiddie and Casual refers to each other. this is just a wrong believe. I don't want to say that Halo isn't Hardcore, but it's not more hardcore than SMG, and a lot of people that bought Halo are casuals.

I don't expect the sales to be above 11 million even though the Wii may end up being the best selling system ever made.  I'm starting to get onside John Lucas with his Crazy 250 million Wii's sold prediction.  I think he expects to see the Wii expand on the PS2's audience and I agree with that much of what he expects.  I watched yesterday's press conference's and I realize now the potential that's stored in the little white box.  Wii fit is going to be HUGE, like 20+ million sold HUGE.  It could be the first Nintendo game/software to bring in 1 billion in revenue.  Nintendo isn't just expanding the market, it looks to be blowing it up and over what anyone expected this gen.

I'm expecting the Wii to move 160+ million units,  intelligent software like Wii fit and Wii sports etc... will guarantee that.  I didn't believe Nintendo could pull it off myself... and I was wrong... this thing is unstoppable.  In the end Galaxy will have an attach rate of less then 8%.  Is that not doable? 

i really think this is a hard question to answer.

ckmlb your about 50-50 change of your your saying with mario.

The way I see it is this.

1) People will see it as a true Mario Game to the N64 days and it will sell about the same as the n64 version if not a little better.

2) People will remember mario sunshine like me and go meh no point buying this. I personally didnt buy mario sunshine cause it had no hype to it or was even promoted as a real mario game it sorta come from nowere.



Now i think it is up to Nintendo which option they will make happen. If they hype it like a true masterpiece that is ment to be the next real mario after n64 then it will sell well. Otherwise it wont.

I really can't say for sure ...

If the XBox 360 doesn't get a price cut in the next couple of months Halo 3 will be the worst selling of the Halo games; if the XBox 360 does get a price cut I think it will come down to which game can keep people buying copies in the next 12 to 18 months...