Unfortunately for him, that's not quite the case. He's released roughly as many games in the past few years as Mario if every different platform's release is counted, but only the best few have outsold most of Mario's offerings in those times, and Mario still has the highest selling games (New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Super Mario Galaxy, I think Galaxy 2, and Mario Kart Wii).mariostar0001
Well it comes down to the fact that Mario=quality. Despite people's personal opinions of the series, it sells for a lot of reasons. People know it's going to have solid gameplay and parents know it's great for their kids especially with the landscape so covered with grim and gritty FPSes however in the last few years namely thanks to the populairity of the Wii, we're finally seeing more family friendly games that aren't half assed.
Even at his height on the Genesis, looking at sales figures, the original Sonic triliogy COMBINED didn't outsell Mario. I remember GI had a list of the top grossing game series of all time. Mario was #1, Pokemon was #2 and Sonic came in way down at #10.
Now some of this is due to the fact that for a few years the series had alienated fans. Sega missed a golden opportunity to get back a lot of old fans with Sonic 4 because they saw it more as a quick nostalgic cash in instead of taking NSMBWii's route and making a full disc game and when a series has been bad for a while, it takes a while to build up that user base again. Colors and Generations appear to be bringing back a lot of those fans who were alienated by the series for the last few years.
And for those who doubt Mario's selling power, there's a news story that the release of Super Mario Land 3D was a jolt to slumping 3DS sales in Japan. If a game can move hardware, that that's something to take notice of.
Log in to comment