Metroid Prime 2 sold horribly because lots of people picked up the first, got bored halfway through and had no desire to play the second. Nintendo needs to move Metroid solely onto the DS and go back to 2D.

Metroid's a bit of a hard sell. The first game was pretty unique for its time, but also insanely obtuse. If you didn't basically shoot, blow up, and Screw Attack everything you saw, animate or inanimate, you never got anywhere. The Game Boy one wasn't much clearer. Super Metroid was marginally easier to follow (and masterly atmospheric), but it was still too obtuse for more impatient gamers. The Prime games have done a lot for the series in terms of making goals clearer (though you still end up wandering aimlessly or lost a lot of the time), but there are a lot of first-person shooters out there to compete with them.

As for Fusion and Zero Mission, well... Most complain that Fusion is too story-intensive, which is is, and Zero Mission strikes the better balance of the two. Had it actually been advertised a bit, it might have managed to sell better. At this point, the best thing for the series would be another 2D entry which does a better job of making clear how to move forward. Not an easy task when your environment is futuristic, but it can be done.

Metroid is NOT a fps series, so please stop recommending Nintendo basturdize Metroid and turn it into Mindless Shooter 35.

The series in general will never reach HUGE mainstreeam sucess, simple because Metroid is NOT a mainstreaam game. The entire franchise grow out of the concept of playing the game how you want, instead of being told what to do. This a lot of people dont like. I know quite a few people bitch on that card about MP3, the game that i think is the easiest.

I think the sales are fine for the type of game it is. Sure it could earn more fans and sales with a competant marketing program, but leave that for the next game (hopefully not 7 years from now :P)

All Metroid games are great IMO, havent played a bad one since I got the first one(NES) for Christmas of 87. I dont know what can sell them, but they arent the sellers they should be IMO.

What it is and what it's perceived to be are two very different things. At a glance, few people would see a Metroid Prime game and say "that's not a first-person shooter". It doesn't matter that it isn't an FPS; it looks like one, and that's the basis by which people make their first (and often last) judgment calls on the Prime series.

The game is perfect, now all they need to improve is Online play that doesn't lag (like Maro kart Wii) and you would see Metroid sales above 5m.

I have actually never seen a TV that does not support 60 Hz. I remember back in the day I played Wind Waker in 60 Hz mode with a friend of mine on an OOOOOOOOOLD 14" PAL TV, it didn't even have composite inputs, we had to use RF, but it worked fine, just a tiny, tiny bit of flickering.

And I also had a crap and old PAL TV, 4:3, made in the early 90s, 60 Hz worked like a charm. So I think you have to be quite unlucky to find a PAL tv that can't display a 60 Hz signal. Point is, I doubt it had much impact in the sales of MP2. If you look at the numbers, Metroid Prime 2 sales in Europe were about half of MP1 (0.38m vs 0.73m), while in the US where this of course was not an issue, the drop was more than 50% (0.84m vs 1.98m).

Anyway,

to get back to the original discussion, it seems people think that the series need to become more action-oriented to sell better. But this is exactly what they did with MP3, and MP1 sold far better, so this theory does not hold. In fact, I believe the changes which attempted to make Metroid more mainstream in MP3 actually hurt sales more than they helped. MP3 was a great game, but it lost a lot of what made Metroid special. Adding all those NPCs and the silly military forces felt tacked on and ruined the solitary mood that is the signature of Metroid.

 Your right, people are used to seeing a game thats displayed in a first person perspective and relate that to a FPS. But frankly, people that are looking for a FPS in any of the Prime games (like Flagship here) will be unhappy. The game isnt about chaining together 40 kills online, its about getting lost and finding your way out.

The biggest issue with the Prime series is that it does try to take expectations and reverse them. That's not how intuitive games work, and is actually why Prime 3 has a bit of a counter-response to the problem by having more enemies to fight and more one-on-many brawls. Intuitive games take your expectations and run with them; if they're especially good, they take those expectations to new levels. But Metroid cannot do that with first-person perspective and expect to succeed. The concept is just close enough to that of an FPS to be incompatible. Hence why I say a 2D entry is the best bet. Or a third-person 3D entry, possibly...

Don't let me catch you talkin' 'bout expectations no more 'fore I gots to take my belt to ya!

Seriously, though, I don't think a "first person adventure" is playing too much against the expectations of informed consumers, particularly the limited crowd that actually plays Metroid.

I like the first-perso perspective too much to give up, I suppose.