Topic: The key to winning the console war is glaringly obvious...

That preowned PS3 light fizzled out onto a pawnbrokers shelf many moons ago

Obviously the low % of 360 owners who brought any one version of CoD compared to similar Wii titles is due to one thing and one thing alone. The RROD. You can probably triple that % and conclude that the vast, vast majority of people who own a 360 play nothing but CoD

...

You're telling me that Zelda and Metroid don't sell consoles? It's sad, but thinking about it the primary developers for ALL of Nintendo's major franchises have recently released games on the 3DS or Wii, meaning they won't have another release for at least a couple of years. Zelda just got done with Skyward Sword a couple years ago, and with the rumored scope of the game will likely take another 2-3 years to finish. Retro's been working on Donkey Kong without any other Metroid developer in sight. HAL just reabsorbed Sora after finishing Kid Icarus a year ago, and is now working with Namco on Smash Bros, so Kid Icarus isn't looking likely. Miyamoto said himself he has no plans for F-Zero or Star Fox. Fire Emblem Awakening launched less than a year ago. Golden Sun is the ONLY major franchise whose developer hasn't released anything in awhile. X looks alright but we need more information, and Bayonetta is only going to appeal to a very limited audience who likes hack n slash, doesn't mind the over-sexualized main character, and played the first game. The reason I say for most of these franchises being needed is because the Wii U lacks exclusive Adventure and RPG games. Those two genres may not be the top selling games, but they are the ones that influence the reputation surrounding a console the most in my opinion. People say "show me Zelda and I'll buy a Wii U". Well then the Wii U IS in a tough spot then isn't it?

Well lets look at the evidence.

Super Mario Galaxy:
Sold half a million copies in its US launch week and coincided with a boost in Wii sales of 82%. It stayed in the top ten for three months straight.

Metroid Prime 3:
Sold 240k copies and boosted Wii sales by 9% in its first week and after two weeks had dropped out of the top 20 for the US.

Smash Bros Brawl:
Sold 1.3million copies in its first week and boosted Wii sales by 121%. Stayed at #1 for five weeks.

Mario Kart Wii:
Sold 1mill copies in its first week, boosted Wii sales by 315%, launched in the same week as GTA4. Stayed in the top 10 for about as long as Galaxy. STILL hovers around in the top 50. Was #53 in the US two weeks ago.

Skyward Sword:
Launched in a very mature and very large Wii install base. Sold 600k copies, boosted Wii sales by 269%. Fell out of the top ten in three weeks.

So what moves Nintendo consoles? I'd argue it's more about Mario Kart and Smash Bros than the big three. It's definitely more about those games than the titles we love to talk about on forums like this. What is the Wii U getting on the horizon? Mario Kart and Smash Bros.

* drops the mic *

Don't touch that mic because it's hot right now

Ya, those games were must haves. I was a Wii only owner on launch day until the slim versions of the HD consoles came out. I got those immediately.
It's amazing how such few of games made the Wii so popular. Everyone bought Mario(Kart), Zelda, Metroid, then the people that didn't know anything about video games bought all the "shovelware" off the shelf based on the box art and stuff. Not all of the unknown games were "shovelware", but you get my point.

Games like No More Heroes, The Conduit, and Madworld were there for people who knew as well. There were good games for "core" gamers on Wii, you just had to look harder. Same thing with the GCN sorta, which is why I bought Wii in the first place. No one gave a crap about GCN and it's games until the games started going for big bucks on eBay.

while we're on the topic, Metroid not actually being anywhere near as popular as some of Nintendo's other franchises is a true tragedy. I can't really blame Nintendo on that one since they tend to try to treat Metroid games as a big deal, so I have to blame society.

I hope Wikipedia and VG Chartz isnt your source for this

If you or anyone else can find a source that's both more reputable and contradicts these numbers then go ahead. Otherwise live with it. VGChartz is very, very easy to navigate and makes pulling up these numbers easy. They are correct enough and reliable enough for a forum setting like this. Frankly I can't be bothered searching for more "official" sources.

If you want to complain about the numbers then go ahead, show us how they're wrong and how my conclusion was wrong. If not you're making a big deal about nothing. Mario Kart and Smash Bros were the main system sellers on the Wii. More than Galaxy, more than Zelda, more again than Metroid, more again still than the titles peoples on forums like this love to talk about.

Simple fact is, you're quoting estimations as if they are fact. It doesn't matter if there is no other source material to quote.

Coming from someone who likes cry 'logical fallacy', you're being pretty rich.

well, people have their opinions. discussing and clashing opinions is fun no matter who is right or wrong you can counter their opinions and show your point but there's no use in getting angry. take it easy, say stupid things to just unwind, avoid building tension and avoid saying offending stuff like that last paragraph.....

It is glaringly obvious

Genius!!!!!!

And which logical fallacy would that be? Name it. If anything you're creating a Red Herring by bringing up this pressing concern that nobody else on the forum would have thought twice about. On the front page of IGN or NL maybe you'd be right to have an issue with it but on a forum? Give us a break, it has nothing to do with the point I was making.

Anyways, VGCharts retroactively adjust their data to fit closer to NPD as it's released anyways. So going back years I'm probably getting data that's copy/pasted from NPD anyway. Ontop of that the important comparison was the fact that a game like Metroid Prime 3 sold 240k in the first week and quickly dropped out of the top 10 but games like Smash Bros and Mario Kart broke 1mill and stayed in the top 10 for weeks or even months. Also I never said they were exact factual numbers, I even rounded most of them to the nearest 100k! How am I saying they're exact numbers?

Reliable or not VGChartz could be out by a huge margin and it would do nothing to change my point. I could have also simply asserted these things without citing the numbers on VGCharts but then you'd probably be accusing me of making it up. So please, find someone else to badger.

Blah blah blah. You stated speculation as if it was fact. Simple as that. I don't care about your excuses.

Also, it's hilarious that said you see no need to come up with 'amateurish theories' and then you go onto build a theory based on VG Chartz data.

You sir, are a peach

So you think that Mario Kart and Smash Bros aren't Nintendo's biggest system sellers? This is speculation purely because it's VGCharts? Ok, lets get more data and for good measure compare it to the equivalent from VGChartz.

NPD for calendar year 2008, five best selling games:

• Wii Play: 5.28mill
• Mario Kart Wii: 5mill
• Wii Fit: 4.53mill
• Smash Bros Brawl: 4.17mill
• GTA IV (360): 3.29mill

VGChartz for 2008, best selling games:

• Wii Sports: 9.67mill (NPD doesn't count this because it was bundled)
• Wii Play: 5.29mill
• Mario Kart Wii: 4.72mill
• Wii Fit: 4.30mill
• Smash Bros Brawl: 3.80mill
• GTA IV (360): 3.64mill

Well look at that, they both support the point I was making. So explain to me how me using VGChartz diminishes from the argument I was making. NPD have the same order as VGChartz, there's no massive gap between the numbers, they both put Mario Kart and Smash Bros well ahead of the existing "core" Wii library in 2008. The numbers are certainly close enough to be able to say "this one moved 1/4 as many units" with a high degree of certainty. Plus there's the fact that they are BOTH estimates but estimates that have come up with very, very similar results.

So go on. Point to the data I have omitted, point to some compelling evidence that shows us how Metroid Prime and Super Mario Galaxy moved more Wii units than Mario Kart and Smash Bros. Go ahead, I'm ready and waiting. If however you agree with the point I was making, and you haven't said I was wrong about that yet, then what are you doing? Go find something else to do.

I never said that I don't think Mario Kart and Smash Bros aren't among the top sellers on Wii.

I said that you are stating speculation as fact, which coming from someone who likes to disprove assertions on the basis of technicalities (i.e. evidence cherry picking accusation) is completely hypocritical.

There is no technicality. It's an estimate just as much as NPD is and any other sales data. They show that Mario Kart and Smash Bros are the amongst the best selling Wii games and are above the Marios, Zeldas and Metroids. You agree with this.

I didn't deliberately ignore anything, I didn't personally attack anyone, I didn't attack a point someone wasn't making. @Neoproteus talked about how Metroid, Mario, Zelda, Starfox, F-Zero, Kid Icarus and so on sell consoles and I responded by saying that actually it was Mario Kart and Smash Bros that tended to move Nintendo's consoles more than anything else. You agreed with this.

However you wanted to start an argument again... so you had a go at me. No reason, you just wanted to have the last word. So this stops here, I'm not having it. I'm not going to respond to you again in this thread.

I agree with your evaluation, I don't agree with how you got to it.

You are contradiction personified.