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Forums - Nintendo - NSMB Wii

Erik Aston on 03 October 2009

WereKitten, Wii sales have not even reached SMB sales in the Americas. Just look at the all time totals chart. Wii Sports in America is at 24.73m, SMB is at 29.52. And it is games like Sports and Fit and yes, Mario Kart which have driven those Wii sales, but not 2D Mario.

And the Mario craze was not a 1985 event. The youngest people to have experienced the Mario craze would be about 24 now, they might not have even owned an NES, but had an early SMW SNES. SMB2 and SMB3 kept selling well into the SNES generation, too.

Mario Kart Wii has sold more that NSMB in America, but only by a bit, and it's not like that's a perfect overlap of buyers. And MKW is 2m short of SMB3 sales in America.

I just find it extremely likely that there are millions of people who would be interested in NSMBW who do not own a Wii.



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The Ghost of RubangB on 03 October 2009
WereKitten said:
The Ghost of RubangB said:

...

2-D Mario platformers are the reason there is an American video game market, so they are the reason we have tons of American FPS games.  Before id Software made Doom, you know what they made?  2-D Mario platformers.  They ported SMB3 to the PC, and asked Nintendo to let them release it.  Nintendo was flattered and said it was a great port, but that they didn't want to make PC games at the time.  So id changed it up into their first Commander Keen game, and the rest is history.

Just to get history straight:

Texture-mapped 3d environments were pioneered in Ultima Underworld by Origin, using technology for scaling that had been used in Wing Commander -  before Wolfenstein 3d and years before Doom. 

You'll find quotes of Carmak himself stating that he started developing the Wolfenstein engine after seeing a tech demo of Ultima Underworld ('91): in Ultima Underworld you could shoot missiles and cast spells in first person, so the simplified FPS was an inevitable subgenre which time had come, and Nintendo had nothing to do with that. Had not Id popularized it, someone else would.

You know, sometimes the history of videogames doesn't circle around Nintendo, like in this case.

Oh my 2 points were supposed to be separate:

1) Nintendo is why we have an American video game market.

2) id loved Nintendo so much they made a Mario port, then when that didn't work out, they made their own 2-D platformer, Commander Keen.  Then they went on to popularize FPS with the Doom craze.

I didn't mean to lump them together to say Nintendo is why id made Doom.  Nintendo just created the modern console era, and the modern booming American video game market that gave birth to the FPS genre.  And id just so happened to also be huge fans of 2-D Mario games.  Everybody was.

I'm 26, and was very much part of the Mario craze and the Doom craze, and those are still some of my favorite games of all time.  While I grew up glued to my NES, my dad was a PC gamer and introduced me to many greats, so I also got my hands on Ultima and Wing Commander at a really young age too.  Yeah, FPS games would have happened eventually, but they were made by Nintendo fans.  Mwahahahaha.



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WereKitten on 03 October 2009

^I also don't agree with point 1) as computer gaming was alive and well during '83 to '85, and a US gaming industry was bound to raise again from the fertile ground of CS studies and Engineering that were booming.

But at least as two separate statements they make more sense :)



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chasmatic12 on 03 October 2009
The Ghost of RubangB said:
chasmatic12 said:
The Ghost of RubangB said:

This Christmas will be huge, but I think New SMB Wii will be the best selling game this Christmas.

That's bold considering MW2 is coming out. I definitely think NSMB will sell more, but I'm not so sure about over the holidays.

If you combine the PS3 and 360 sales of Modern Warfare 1, it just barely surpasses the sales of Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins, on Game Boy, from 1992.  When 11 million people are willing to pay for a 2-D Mario platformer with 4 shades of cream spinach color, no multiplayer, no Yoshi, no motion controls, and no Koopa Kids, I find it hard to believe any FPS will be able to outsell New SMB Wii.

Yeah, NSMB Wii is set to outsell MW2. Just some numbers on how it will have to perform before January to beat MW2:

Ok, so MW was released in early November in both the Americas and Others, so we'll give it an 8 week time period before Christmas (I know this is less than 8 weeks but I figured we could round up to 2 months. I also know that the holiday season goes past Christmas but we're doing the weeks up til Christmas). In those 8 weeks in those 2 regions, MW sold 5,703,912 copies on the 360 and PS3 combined. So the remaining 6,721,826 purchased their copies from that January til now. Modern Warfare 2 releases in mid-November this year, so we'll give it a 7 week holiday period. MW2 will sell about 6 million copies in a time period of 1 week less. NSMB Wii releases a week after MW2 in both the Americas and Others. Can it sell 6 million copies in 6 weeks? I don't know. The legs will be tremendous, most definitely.

Mario Kart Wii sold 5,103,756 it's first 6 weeks with Japan included. NSMB Wii may not have Japan. It's still going at 17.5 million.

New Super Mario Bros (DS) sold 3,303.309 copies its first 6 weeks in all three regions, but went on to sell 19.5 million.

So while I agree that NSMB will most definitely outsell MW2 in the long run (by a ridiculous margin), I don't think it'll be the best selling game this Christmas. So I agree with half of your prediction.

Sorry for the super-sloppy post. -_-