Top 10 Nintendo Wii Lifetime Sales in Japan

Not enough people have Brawl.

Honestly i expected Twilight Princess to have done a little better.

And come on Galaxy, you can make that million mark by the end of 2008, i believe in you!

My Observations:

1. Wii Fit: Cost twice as much, been out for only 3 months and already over 2 Million? Holy Crap!
2. Mario Galaxy: Hasn't broke a million when New Super Mario Brothers on the DS broke 5 Million? I call Shenanigans!
3. Zelda: Only 550K?!?!? This proves my point that the Japanese are insane.

But remember it was also released on GCN at the same time, so i'm one who owns it but on GCN not Wii

Mario Galaxy has been a failure in Japan when you look at the sales of past Mario games.

Twilight Princess just barely broke half a million?! Super Mario Galaxy is behind Mario Party 8 (Perhaps the worst game of the series)?! I also believe it criminal that Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is lacking from that list.

With over 14 million Wiis sold, I expected a larger number of top titles to have been sold.

For some reason, Japan just doesn't seem to like 3D Mario platformers.

In a way, I'm sort of glad TP hasn't done so well in Japan. I personally had a lot of problems with the game. It's a great game of course, but it was too easy and too similar to previous Zelda games. Zelda needs a complete makeover if it wants to get in my good books again. I think I read not too long ago from Miyamoto that the poor Japanese sales of the game are perhaps a sign that the series needs to change in some shape or form - for the better. Even though it was released on GCN too, TP has done very poor in Japan.

Outside of that though, Wii Fit has done remarkably well. Well done to Nintendo with that one.

The way Wii Fit is going, it's going to be at the top of that list in no time. The high price doesn't seem to be putting people off. I would get it if I could actually find it in a shop!

Zelda isn't that big in Japan, as is Metroid. Shame, both are great Wii-games. But TP was a bit too easy, you are right with that...
But Japanese are somewhat... well... conservative. So it's imho no indication on quality, but on 'repeatability' (with exception on Zelda, which is almost every time the same, but TP didn't get bought on Wii.).
But 3 'great games' breaking into mass market - Wii Play, Fit and Sports - is not common, since the masses on't get the best but the most common.

It's no surprise 9 out of 10 great games are from Nintendo, with the crap others are releasing on Wii.

Right, a bit of feedback from all these comments:

1.) Super Mario Galaxy has exceeded sales of Super Mario Sunshine on a system that is far less 'hardcore' than the GameCube. Sunshine didn't even make 800,000 units (~780,000), so for Galaxy to hit a million by the end of this year is a good sign. I know most people's expectations were higher, but the market condition in Japan is different to what people think it actually is.

2.) Zelda launched with Wii in Japan, but again the hardcore base that had remained loyal to Nintendo for so long in the N64 days and early GC days had already long gone to other formats. The GC did far worse in Japan that any other major territory...so the hardcore uptake on Wii was so low that Zelda struggled in the face of casual games like Wii Play and Wii Sports. From what I've seen, Nintendo should re-release TP at a slightly lower price now and sales would probably be better. As for GC sales of TP eating into Wii ones...in the US and Europe, fair enough. But in Japan the GC edition was only available in limited quantities online.

3.) These numbers are accurate as of 11th May. Wii Fit came out at the beginning of Decemeber 2007 in Japan, so not just three months on sale.

4.) The Metroid series is not popular in Japan. Metroid Prime 3 then is seen as a massive success as it's sold around 100,000 units, more than the first two GC games did, more than Hunters on DS and more than Prime Pinball.

5.) Sales of Galaxy on Wii and NSMB on DS simply cannot be compared because of the massive difference in user-base numbers and demographics. But if you ARE going to do it, check out ~1 million of SMG on a 6 million userbase compared to >5 million of NSMB on a >22 million userbase

Metroid Corruption is insale low.
Galaxy and TP should be higher too.

I mean..Twlight Princess is a masterpiece. 60 hours of diverse gaming...4 years to make, shitloads to do. No fetch-quests required. Almost pure joy to play.

And it barely sales more then M&S.
Thats depressing.

I do agree with the hardcore argument and I would think that would be affecting both Zelda and Mario. Personally, I thought that TP was a departure for the series with some more serious themes and realistic graphics (relatively speaking). Personally, I think they need to go further with that.

One thing to remember as well, this is the first time that a Zelda game was released with the system. Usually the game comes out when the installed base is much larger. Hopefully Nintendo, will learn from that mistake.