While the legs may seem to be worse than, say, Mario Kart or Wii Fit, consider that neither of those games were above 10 million in 7 weeks or 15 million in 32 weeks.

Also consider that New Super Mario Bros DS took over 2 years to finally reach 15 million (and almost 4 to reach 20 million), and yet it consistently kept selling in that 40-60k range. 

SMB 5 should be a mainstay, selling in this range till the end of the system's lifecycle and also having large boosts during the holidays.

Like I said, I have no doubts that it will finish in th top 10 for the generation. It will keep sellingn and keep selling, and in time should outsell a lot of things. But there's no reason to think that it's bigger than Mario Kart, or Wii Sports, or Call of Duty - especially the last, which can sell 12-20 million units a year for three years straight.

So uh, yeah. That's DALEK SEAN.

Oh and I don't really notice there to be any huge difference between the first and the current Zelda games. You know, aside from the first one being terribly vague and obnoxiously difficult, like all the NES games.

DALEK SEAN is Griffin projecting himself onto Malstrom.

And it's clear to me that you've never played an old Zelda for more than 15 minutes and no one should take you seriously anymore.

• You get your sword much faster in old Zelda games
• Old Zelda games had a lot of fighting. Despite newer Zeldas can do combat better, they have less of it.
• The world is not dangerous. There are not fearful enemies. Fight a room full of darknuts and then try to tell me these gamesm aren't different.
• Items actually have a use outside iof solving puzzles.
• Upgrades to your sword are like power-ups rather than a movement of the story.
• The overworld was full of stuff and felt very large. Newer Zelda's overworld is very flat.
• Newer Zeldas have too much talking (I'm looking at you Spirit Tracks)
• Older Zeldas had few puzzles, if any at all.
• The bosses were actual fights rather then "solve puzzles, hit with sword, repeat 3 times."
• The games "Spirit Tracks," is a newer Zelda game.

He meant the series is bigger, which is why it sold faster, and with far less marketing.

2d Mario on a console hasn't seen a release in 15 years (and probably won't be seen for another 15) and yet it is still as relevant today as it was decades ago. Will Call of Duty still be relevant in 20 years?

If Nintendo was smart and made yearly or even bi-yearly updates to their biggest franchise, they would be selling 20 million games a year as well (but Miyamoto still wants to work on 3d Mario, he thinks he has another "solution" to make it sell). 

Doesn't matter whether or not Call of Duty will retain its size in twenty years, the point of fact is that right now Call of Duty is bigger, sells more, and sells faster. Claiming that 2D Mario is bigger is factually wrong.

We don't know that they would be selling that much. The only time they did anything like that - back inn the NES days - sales levels were not consistent.

And no, 2D Mario is not as relevant as it was decades ago. If it were, it would be sellingn more now than it was then, and that's not the case.

You are bean-counting the sales like some kind of horse race. "Oh look! Call of Duty is now selling more than SMB 5 on a weekly basis, that means it is a bigger franchise than Mario!"

But what game do you think is going to sell better this holiday? And what about the next holiday after that? What about for the next 3 years? Which game do you think will keep selling?

2d Mario is not a game that sells for a year and then dies. It sells for the life of the system.

No other Mario game, in fact no other GAME, has legitimately sold as fast as Super Mario Bros 5 has. That, to me, tells me it is just as relevant as it was 20 years ago.

Modern Warfare 2 is sitting comfortable at about 19.5 million units based on console sales alone. It's been selling faster than NSMBWii since the beginning - the only time when it didn't was a very narrow window of six or eight weeks.

Black Ops will sell better this holiday. The next Call of Duty might not sell so well, but it will sell better than NSMBWii the year thereafter. Remember: this isn't about individual games. This is about franchises.

NSMBWii broke 10 million in about.... seven weeks? Eight? I remember making a topic about it - it was very exciting. It broke the record for single SKUs. But that qualifier is important, because Modern Warfare 2 broke 10 million in two weeks.

And your standard here is wrong: going by the logic of Malstrom, the fact that it's seen a badly decreased appeal per number of players currently in the market is indicative that its relevancy is waning.

This is why I said that Mario 5 "legitimately" sold 10 million in 7 weeks.

Modern Warfare had an opening week of 8 million copies which was mainly due to preorders, marketing, and hype. It took two more weeks to get to 10 million. Imagine if those pre-orders didn't exist and if core gamers actually waited till the game came out before they purchased it.

That's what Mario 5 did. It's sales were legitimate, not a result of hype. People legitimately wanted the game and it sold out. IT SOLD OUT. We're talking about the disc-based age, not the cartridge age.

During those 7 weeks, if you take away Modern Warfare's "hype" sales, you can see just how badly Mario 5 was bludgeoning it. Mario 5 was outselling Modern Warfare 2 across all platforms till the first week in March. Only then, as Wii hardware supplies were waining, did Mario finally level out.

It has only been the past month or so, really, that we've seen Mario 5's sales dip below Modern Warfare's combined sales. There are reasons for this... Mario Galaxy 2's release, for instance. Rest assured this is not the last we'll see of Mario 5. It will see a sales resurgence during the holidays, Modern Warfare 2 will not. It will keep selling well for years, Modern Warfare will not. Like I said, it is a mainstay title.

The only way Activision can keep Call of Duty a mainstay title is by updating it yearly, but there is no way Black Ops will sell higher than Modern Warfare 2. We're talking about a Treyarch-made Call of Duty. In fact, now that Infinity Ward has been largely disassembled, I expect Call of Duty to be on the decline. One bad game is all it really takes to kill a great franchise.

2d Mario, on the other hand, has a lot of potential. If they created new content and actually gave the game funding, there's no telling how successful it could be. The fact that Nintendo is making Donkey Kong Country and Kirby for this holiday season shows how "relevant" Mario 5 was.

Here's to Mario 6 coming out before I am 30!