There is a history of games sales that might be instructive to figure out whether SMG is off to a good start, a bad start or a normal start. Here's a table showing how other Mario games have done for first week sales and then "Life to Date" (LTD) sales.

I estimate 350k first week sales, give or take 10%. That would put SMG on track to hit slightly above Sunshine numbers. The curious thing with these sales numbers is that heavily frontloaded numbers have lower overall sales. SMG may be able to break this trend and eventually put up a number like 1.5 - 2 million.

Here's another chart that I used for my preliminary analysis that I'll put out here just in case it might be of use to anyone else. Lot's of interesting things to see and read in between all those numbers.

I also think in this historical context that the Wii neither bombed nor significanly outperformed. It came in pretty much in line with what a reasonable person would expect it to do. If you feel otherwise please feel free to chime in with facts, figures and logic.

_{Thank to Jayluu (formerly known as John Lucas) and Tabasina for inspiring to complete this little project.} 

thats 350,000 for november 1-4, still 3 more days of sales data needed for a complete week

it's dissapointing and it's gonna sell far less than most people expected. It's gonna probably gonna settle somewhere between the sales of mario 64 and Sunshine, the thing that is dissapointing is that the userbase is probably gonna be bigger than both of those systems combined in Japan when this gen is over.

 Well that would be pretty much in line with historical expectations, right?

I think the game will have incredible legs. And honestly, maybe a lot are waiting until its closer to the holidays to buy the game. Granted Xmas isnt as big over there. In fact, xmas is more of a commercial holiday in Japan. The major religion in Japan is Buddhism and Shinto, so Christmas is more commercial event. The main celebration revolves around Christmas eve and not Christmas day. It is still common for people to give Xmas gifts though.

How did you calculate the 1.8 million?

Edit Oh wait, never mind. 

Good analysis - looks about right. I guess my "hope" for 600k-700k week#1 sales, was quite unreasonable.

As long as it blows past 1m this Xmas, and puts the ghost of Sunshine to rest - a lot of people will be happy.

The % of LTD sales will be a lot lower than Sunshine, simply because the Wii is/will be a lot more successful. If the Wii goes on to sell 20m units in Japan - it could end up around the 12%-15% - giving it lifetime sales of 3.5m-4m units.

We'll see :)

One of the tricks is... if the percentage of first week sales goes down to say 10% then the sales for SMG will be around 3 million. It is all about the legs, and the biggest selling games all have very low first week percentages. It's just math. Which is just a different way of saying what Shams said above in his last paragraph.

 5 x 3.5, it's all up there.

i think 350k is too high though, 20% is reasonable though.