Super Mario Galaxy sells 251k its first week

We're not the type to equate a game's sales with its quality or our enjoyment of the title, but we're still a little disappointed with these low numbers for Super Mario Galaxy. Media Create, Japan's digital entertainment tracking service, reported that only 251,000 copies of Nintendo's high-profile platformer were sold in its first week of release.

While selling a quarter-million of anything seems impressive, let's, once again, compare that number with first-week sales data for previous Mario games and recent blockbusters:

• New Super Mario Bros. - 900,000
• Super Mario Sunshine - 280,000
• Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core - 486,659
• Mario Party 8 - 265,000
• Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen And The Tower Of Mirrors - 263,000

We expect Super Mario Galaxy to stay near the top of the sales chart until, at least, the end of the year, offering itself up to shoppers as the perfect holiday gaming gift. We fear, however, that Super Mario Galaxy's low numbers -- as well as Metroid Prime 3's and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess', for that matter -- may point towards a negative sales trend for epic/hardcore titles that Nintendo won't be able to ignore. Peek past the post break to see how other games fared in Japan this past week.

Media Create Sales 10/29 - 11/4

1. [WII] Super Mario Galaxy (Nintendo) - 251,000 / NEW
2. [360] Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation (Bandai-Namco) - 77,000 / NEW
3. [NDS] Final Fantasy Tactics A2 (Square-Enix) - 51,000 / 193,000
4. [PS2] Super Robot Wars Scramble Commander the 2nd (Banpresto) - 21,000 / NEW
5. [NDS] DS Literature Collection (Nintendo) - 18,000 / 72,000
6. [NDS] DS Nishimura Kyotarou Suspense Detective Series: Deadly Intent (Tecmo) - 18,000 / 115,000
7. [WII] Wii Sports (Nintendo) - 16,000 / 2,182,000
8. [NDS] Flash Focus: Vision Training in Minutes a Day (Nintendo) - 15,000 / 676,000
9. [NDS] World Soccer Winning Eleven DS: Goal to Goal (Konami) - 15,000 / 44,000
10. [NDS] Pokémon Mysterious Dungeon: Time Expedition Party (Pokémon) - 14,000 / 552,000