Mario Party, I'd let you argue. Mario Strikers, you've clearly never played - that's one of the most "hardcore"-type sports games out there. Animal Crossing, well, is a niche-market kind of hardcore (which accounts for most "hardcore" games anyhow).

It is amazing to me how many people see the word "hardcore" and become crazed.

The OP made sure to put the (hard) part of the word in parentheses. The point, as he and others have stated, is to show that the top 10 selling core Nintendo first-party games out are outselling the top 10 games on the other platforms, regardless of type of game or by whom the game was released (first party vs. third party).

A core Nintendo game may be considered by most to be "hard core" -- Metroid. It may be considered by all to not be "hard core" -- Mario Party. Or its "hard core" status may be debated -- Mario Galaxy.

What is of note is that all the games on this list date back at least one generation. It does not include any new Nintendo games from the "Wii generation" -- Sports, Play, Fit, or Music. That would really tilt the comparison in favor of the Wii.

Mike from Morgantown

hmm

To anyone saying Mario is not hard core: You are nuts... Mario was hard core before hard core got it's name.

The OP is talking about "Nintendo core", not about the foggy "hardcore" concept, guys. Stop pointing out which games in your opinion suck or are "casual"...

On the other hand I can't see the sense in totaling them. The only thing it demonstrates is that during its history Nintendo accumulated more iconic franchises they're willing to iterate over and over again, and that always sell very well with their core crowd (5-8M).

On the MS consoles we only have two generations to analyze, but both Halo and Gears will probably exhibit great fidelity with next iterations.

On the Sony side, there's much less as even in 3 generations Sony never tried to build iconic mass franchises.

If anything the OP just proved Nintendo is cheating. You have to be if excluding WiiFit, Wiiplay and a few others still has Nintendo in this position.

Granted at this point it would be in all fairness that the PS3 and Xbox360 software sales be... never mind OP pigeon holed that notion.

Mario Kart might be casual. It might be "hardcore". I don't know.

What I do know is that Mario Kart is most definitely a "core Nintendo" title.

There were all good games.Specially Mario Strikers, I remember playing that game on chrismas.

Mario Kart is so hardcore that it started a meme not too long ago (about 4to 5 years ago) about Nintendo games killing friendships.

It lead to the dissection of friends who play these 'family friendly' games together only to realize, they would conclusively position one another as enemies and their methods of reaching victory were cut throat to say the least.

Some players nearly went into blood lust. (Using a star and hunting a specific other player.)

I love when I post something and it gets ignored. Maybe you didn't get the point, I'll re-iterate:

First, the 360 top 10 is actually 56m not 55.61 like you wrote in the OP. So, it does in fact win this "competition" according to the guidelines you have set.

Secondly, Nintendo has a bigger userbase.
This second point has two very important sub-points:

a) If you add the 360 and PS3 together to get a similar install base, you can see that the 3rd party (multiplats) trounce this wii list

b) If you take the top 10 1st party IP's
Halo3,GeoW,GeoW2, Forza,Fable2, MGS4, REsistance, Motorstorm, GT5P, Uncharted you get about 43Million. This is significantly below the wii 1st party. However, it is also in conjunction with the 3rd party games ie there is a lot of competition. The top ten cross platform are:

gta4 - 12.59
COD4- 11.57
Halo 3 - 9.57
CODWAW - 8.64
assassins creed - 7.85
GH3 - 6.11
GeoW - 5.88
GeoW2 - 5.41
Forza - 3.98
MGS4 - 3.92

= 75.52

top 15 wii games (not including "Wii _____" games):
MKWii, SSBB, SMG, Mario&Sonic, MarioParty, Zelda, GH3, LinksCrossbow, CarnivalGames, BrainTraining, AnimalCrossing, GHWorldTour, SuperPaperMario, LegoStarWars

=76.19

average price difference over the years. ~350 for an HD system ~250 for wii. Now, if you think about it, that extra hundred dollars could have bought 2 extra games per person, so ~100million more sales in games.