New year, new thread... Old topic.

With all the holiday numbers in, here's the staggering totals for Mario sales in the current generation.

New Super Mario Bros.		Nintendo	18.43m
Mario Kart DS		Nintendo	14.06m
Super Mario 64 DS		Nintendo	6.63m
Mario Party DS		Nintendo	5.15m
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games		Sega	3.91m
Mario Hoops 3 on 3		Nintendo	1.86m
Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis		Nintendo	1.59m
Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time		Nintendo	1.56m
DS TOTAL			53.19m

Mario Kart Wii		Nintendo	14.01m
Super Mario Galaxy		Nintendo	7.92m
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games		Sega	6.66m
Mario Party 8		Nintendo	6.11m
Super Paper Mario		Nintendo	2.68m
Mario Strikers Charged		Nintendo	1.89m
Mario Super Sluggers		Nintendo	0.76m
Wii TOTAL			40.03m

Total games: 15, or 14 if you combine the two versions of Mario and Sonic.
Overall total: 93.22m

For comparison, the only game franchises to have sold 100m copies are Mario, Pokemon and the Sims. Franchises like Grand Theft Auto and Final Fantasy may be in good shape to reach the 100m milestone during this gen, but not before Mario reaches it for this gen alone.

Average sales per game (M&S Wii and DS seperate): 6.21m
This amount would rank as the 68th best selling game of all time.

Average sales per game (M&S Wii and DS combined): 6.66m
Evil.

With 18.43m sales, New Super Mario Bros ranks as the 10th best-selling game of all time in VGC's database. Removing games with a "forced" bundle, multiple SKUs or a budget price (Wii Play) it ranks 1st.

8 current gen Mario games have topped 5m sales and rank among the top 100 best-selling games of all-time. 7 of these are in the top 75, 4 in the top 50, and 3 in the top 25.

The two Mario Kart games this gen have sold a combined total of 28.07m. For comparison, the first four Mario Kart games sold a total of 31.04m, and the entire Gran Turismo series is listed with sales of 50.40m sales in the VGC database. The highest selling racing game of all time is Gran Turismo 3 at 14.87m, a number about to be bested by both current MK games.

With combined sales of 10.57m, Mario and Sonic easily ranks alongside the combined sales of the best-selling entries in the Madden and FIFA series, to be possibly the best-selling sports game of all-time excluding Wii Sports.

With sales of 6.63m, Super Mario 64 DS has now sold over 55% of what the original SM64 sold.

NSMB, MKDS and MKWii have each doubled the sales of the best-selling Mario game from last gen, MK Double Dash.

lol i was gonna say, "dont we have a thread about this already"

but wow thats a lot of mario

New Super Mario Bros. and Mario Kart Wii are beasts!

Super Smash Bros. isn't included, even though Mario is the emphasis (along with other Nintendo characters). Mario & Sonic is included, but it has characters from both the Mario and Sonic universe. What are the qualifications for a game being in the Mario series? Is it having "Mario" in the title?

Yeah. That seems like a pretty good qualification to me.

Is it having "Mario" in the title?

Yes.

Smash Bros. is not included despite the fact that my dad calls it "Mario Super Mario Smash Brawl Bros Mario" or something like that.

And of course there are plentiful spin-off games without "Mario" in the title which you could make arguments for, like Yoshi's Island DS or Super Princess Peach.

Super Mario Bros. -> Super Smash Bros.

That's pretty close, no?

So Mario > * , again! In the Gamecube period, for a while, I thought Mario had lost a little of his appeal, but it doesn't seem to be the case at all.

I mean, several of Marios sub-franchises (Mario Party, Mario Kart, etc) have bigger sales than most other franchises total!

How depressing would it be to be an actual Italian plumber, knowing that no matter how hard you work, how successful you are, you will never be the most successful man of your trade?

The sims should get a huge boost this year aswell considering the sims 3 is getting released. Heads will roll.