Super Mario Galaxy is one of the most beloved Mario games of all time -- it came in at number 9 on our Top 50 Videogames of the Decade list -- but don’t tell that to New Super Mario Bros. Wii. According to NPD sales numbers, Galaxy has sold 4.1 million units in the two-plus years since its launch in November 2007. But by the end of 2009, NSMB Wii -- which had been out for all of 45 days at that point -- had already sold 4.2 million copies. Astounding, isn’t it? In fact, NSMB Wii topped the December 2009 sales charts by moving 2.82 million units, which even beat out the juggernaut that is Modern Warfare 2 by approximately 70,000 copies.
So why is NSMB Wii selling like hotcakes when Galaxy has been a (comparatively) slow burn? Well, the install base is certainly a factor: at the end of 2007, there were just under 9 million Wiis in North American homes, and that number has gone up to 26 million since then (including 3.81 million in December 2009 alone). And I’m sure the retina-burning red box for the game helped it stick out from all the other white cases on store shelves. Plus, Nintendo marketed the hell out of NSMB Wii (and focused on its multiplayer lunacy, a big draw and a first for Mario games).
Yes, all that stuff contributed to the game’s quick sales. But here’s what I think mattered the most. I think that as much as gamers clamor for originality and innovation in games, they’re actually way more comfortable with the familiar. Galaxy was lauded for breaking the mold with its spherical worlds and gravity-based gameplay, and 4.1 million sales is nothing to sneeze at, to be sure. But when Nintendo basically allowed you to play Super Mario World with three of your friends and gave the final product a ridiculous name, the game sold more copies in a fraction of the time.
Nintendo has been selling you your childhood for the past two decades, and you’ve been eating it up. Maybe when Super Mario Galaxy 2 comes out later this year, it’ll feel familiar enough for you to buy it.
2D Mario Leaps Over 3D One in Sales [IGN via Joystiq]
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Contest:
4:30 PM on 01.21.2010
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Although Galaxy deserved more sales than it got.
Have a nice day.
History has shown that quality only minimally influences sales.
This is good to see, no less, as it may make Nintendo lean towards more 2D adventures. Or just more Mario games in general.
Shame on you Wii owner's.
But in all seriousness I much preferred Galaxy to NSMBW purely because it's much meatier and as good as NSMBW is it's still a case of been there done that (although the multiplayer is a nice diversion).
Keep Mario in the Mushroom Kingdom, Miyamoto.
To test this out take a non-gamer friend, parent, relative, whatever, and pop in a first person shooter on the 360 or PS3, and give them a controller. I give you better than even odds that they'll be able to move forward and back and strafe, but they'll struggle to turn. Once they realize they need to use both sticks to navigate you'll see a lot of looking up and down, getting looking at the ceiling and floor, and spinning. Lots of spinning. As they start to understand it you'll see jerky movement broken with occasional bouts of spinning, getting stuck on walls, or just feeling lost. Once you throw in crouching (why am i moving so slow?), weapons switch, etc. they're done.
I know mario galaxy is a more streamlined experience. But a lot of casual / non-gamers are already predisposed to dislike 3D games due to bad experiences.
NSMB Wii gives the impression of immediate accessibility, which appeals to the demographic. Galaxy does not. It doesn't even matter if you know anything about the two games. The screenshots say communicate "this one is complicated" whereas "this one is fun".
Most consumers aren't basing their purchase decisions on more than that. They're not going to read the reviews or consider which is the more innovative or higher quality experience. They're just going to say, "that one looks hard. This one looks fun."
If you look across the best selling games on the Wii (not the best rated) you'll find that a lot of them don't require real 3D navigation. They're either fixed camera minigames, 2D/2.5D brawlers or scrollers, puzzles, or on rails experiences. There are few best sellers on the platform that require navigating a 3D world.
Because people don't like anything new?
I loved both, so I could really care less which one sells better.
I agree on the approachability aspect. Not that Galaxy is exactly intimidating, but 2D Mario is about as easy to explain as it gets. Combine that accessability with multiplayer, and you have yourself a no-brainer.
As for quality, it's debatable. The production values were higher for Galaxy, but some of the levels for NSMB were as well-crafted as their predecessors. Bowser's castle was especially epic.
I'll stay away from Galaxy and its sequel because I really dislike 3D Mario titles.
The point wasn't that Galaxy was a commercial flop and that everybody hated it. Not at all. In fact, it placed awfully high in dtoid's top 50 games of the decade.
It's just that NSMB has been spilling money out of every orifice.
This story would be so much more interesting, if you compared Japanese numbers, where NSMBW already sold three times as many copies as Galaxy.
* Unless the game is Yoshi's Island.
Galaxy is as innovative as a mainstream platformer can get. It should've outsold this nice, but samey game.
No one should feel bad for losing to NSMB Wii in sales though. Even Modern Warfare 2 is losing to it (that is, NSMB has outsold any singular version of MW2). 10 million copies sold worldwide? Yeah, that is monstrous.
I don't think Galaxy was bad, not in the slightest. But the fact remains that 2-D Mario is more accessible to these new gamers that Nintendo has brought in with the Wii. Heck, I'm starting to think that maybe Mario is better tailored to the 2-D environment. But that doesn't mean I won't play Galaxy 2, or quit playing 3-D games.
This may be a wakeup call for Nintendo to re-analyze their franchises, and what makes them so good to the customer today, as well as ones that quit gaming in the past. I think the arcade style game-play is what makes this game so appealing, as do other games that have that sort of structure.
A great deal of games should follow that structure, it makes them much more re-playable. Mario Galaxy took me a while to want to come back to, especially after I got every Star in the game. Mario Bros. Wii? I'm currently replaying the game again, and this time, without touching the checkpoint flag on any stage whatsoever (and it really is challenging!).
But does that mean every game has to be that way? Absolutely not, but there definitely needs to be a balance. Especially since a bunch of games are trying to be epic, and be a movie, and be some high class pedestal "art".
1. You make your last statement sound like people didn't buy Super Mario Galaxy when obviously it sold very well.
2. You say people should buy Super Mario Galaxy 2 as if it will be innovative and original, despite it being the sequel to the game you are lauding and therefore being neither. Why don't you just say "Go buy Super Mario Galaxy you heathens!"
My problem with these arguments for originality in gaming generally come from my belief that you shouldn't throw out the good things in a strive for new and original. For instance, Nintendo's last side scrolling Mario game was when they released Super Mario World in 1991. Consumers had to wait a full 18 years to get an experience like that again on a console. I think after 18 years of experimenting with Mario we the consumers deserved another old school console Mario game, despite whatever successes they may have found with the character otherwise.
Dammit.
I love them both. <3 And can't wait for SMG 2!
And that with the less realistic dimensions comes shorter levels, less complex tasks, and easier short-burst gameplay experiences. It just feels less demanding.