Super Mario 3D Land breaks 5 million sold, Skyward Sword at 3.4 million

by JC Fletcher on Jan 27th 2012 1:30PM

Nintendo elaborated on the "strong sales" for The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and Super Mario 3D Land today, in its list of million-selling titles for the last nine months. The Wii adventure sold 3.42 million units worldwide, of which 3.04 million took place outside of Japan.

That makes it the best selling Wii game for the period, right? Nope! That's Mario Kart Wii, which sold 4.91 million copies between April and December, for a life-to-date total of 31.91 million copies. New releases Kirby's Return to Dreamland and Wii Play Motion squeaked into the million-seller club with 1.21 million and 1.12 million respectively.

On 3DS, Super Mario 3D Land sold 5.03 million in total -- 3.68 million "overseas" and 1.36 million in Japan. Mario Kart 7 sold almost as many, at 4.54 million. Even the good old DS managed to have some million-selling new releases: Professor Layton and the Last Specter (1.19 million, all outside of Japan) and Kirby Mass Attack (1.01 million).

Via: Shacknews
Source: Financial Results Briefing - Supplementary Information

Tags: 3ds, ds, kirbys-return-to-dreamland, Legend-of-Zelda-2010, nintendo, professor-layton-and-the-last-specter, sales, super-mario-3d-land, The-Legend-of-Zelda-Skyward-Sword, wii

Reader Comments (49)

this worries me more than people paying for yearly CoD games.

@Roxas560

Errr, what? You comment worries me, especially since you have a Luigi avatar. Nintendo properties >>> more military first-person snooze fests.

@Roxas560 ...Care to explain?

@Nergy

He's implying it should have sold more.

At least Skyward sword should have imo.

@Roxas560 It mystifies me how Nintendo's customers will look at a "new" Nintendo game and immediately have their memories wiped clean of any previous encounters with the franchise. Nintendo's philosophy seems to be "Why fix what isn't broke and indeed, why not repackage and resell what isn't broke to add another sprinkling of pennies to the official Nintendo money pile?"

As someone who bought 3D Land and not Zelda...

I find it funny that 10 hour game sells 5 million at $40 and a 40 hour game sells far less for only $10 more.

Just goes to show how unpopular the Wii is, even compared to it's pricier handheld cousin.

@Nergy
considering the age of these nintedo properties it shocks me that noone complains about repition, rehashing, and plain copy and paste. yet when other games like CoD, Assassin's Creed get released everybody is up in arms about how much sameness they have, even though they add more to the core gameplay mechanics. i just dont understand how it doesnt bug people that zeldas formula, and really everything Mario has been the same for decades, yet thats fine. but i do appreciate the jump to 3d that they did take but its still the same game. heck how many times have we been to hyrule? [havent played skyward sword so sorry if i missed something new]

tl;dr
same game for decades vs. constantly changing games.

@Roxas560

If you don't like it, don't buy it.

Nintendo won't mind - they have five MILLION other people who WILL buy it. =)

@Roxas560
The only way you could post that is if you don't actually play any video games.

@Roxas560
I have friends that constantly complain that every Nintendo game is the same, yet they play CoD and Street Fighter all the time.
Do you see the delicious irony? CoD gets a release EVERY YEAR, without fail, Mario/Zelda - not so much. CoD changes pretty much nothing EVERY YEAR, Mario/Zelda at least try something new every now and then (Mario 64, galaxy, yoshi's island, party, kart)

and no, i'm not a nintendo fanboy - i own all 3 consoles, and play my 360 the most

@Roxas560

Uhm, have you never seen the rampage that the fanboys go on every time a Mario game is announced..? People do complain about repetition in those games, but sensible people simply ignore their trollish cries, and keep playing good Mario games.

@flalex05 It's a cycle,there's enough ppl playing games now where repetition in very profitable

@flalex05

Not to mention it's not just COD, but also Battlefield and many other military shooters that are really just the same thing. So basically it's 1 Zelda every few years, versus a while bunch of COD-clones which appear several times each year. And I'm talking about all those other ones too like Resistance or Killzone, it's all the same crap.

@Roxas560: key word, yearly. There have never been more than 3 mario games (main mario games that is) on a console in any generation.. yet there are already going to be 5 assassins creeds on one console in this generation alone. there have been as many call of duty games in its less than 10 years of existence as there have been zelda games in its 25 year existence. get it?

i do think nintendo is putting mario games out more frequently (i'm not sure we needed two 3d marios and a 2d mario in one generation for the same console, but there were 3 on the nes so...), but its nothing like cod.

by the time those franchises you mentioned are as old as these two, they might have over 100 titles out.

@bm111
Would disagree on Battlefield. Battlefield 3 (especially the engine) make it well worth the money as a sequel. COD has been rehashing basically the same engine for years now.

@Roxas560

well, at the end of the day, they both follow formulas, and sell millions from following the formula.

Nintendo- 2d mario, then 3d mario, then 2d paper mario, mario kart, rinse repeat.

Activision- COD MW, COD Black Ops, COD MW #, COD BLACK OPs #.

I got tired of Mario a long time ago, though I loved Mario on N64. You also got to remember that parents will have NO PROBLEMS buying mario for their kids. Adults will also have no problem buying COD to shoot people in the face :)

@jsx92
You finished 3D Land in 10 hours? Pretty sure I've spent more than that on it, and I'm only halfway through the 'special' levels; there are also some levels (normal and special) that I don't even have three stars on yet.

Don't get me wrong it is shorter than Skyward Sword and less awesome, but not too much less.

@simplicity14

Oh gimme a break. It's the same freaking thing. Same shooty gun tough guys in linear grey levels shooting other shooty gun tough guys.

Well deserved. Two of the best games out there.

@KungFuChaosNinja

Haven't played super mario 3D land but Skyward sword could have been better, sorta fell apart in the latter half.

@Scuffles

Strange... From what I've seen citics seemed to. love the game to bits while fans have been "meh" on the game. What's this all about?

@Mrguy you know that guy

It's called money. It changes opinions when necessary.

@Scuffles
....
everyone I talk to says the exact opposite. First half is typical Zelda, second half is much better.

@simplicity14
I liked pretty much all of the game, so uh, I guess opinions just differ?

That said - my favourite bit was probably the very start, just because I loved Link's original outfit and the scene where they're on top of the goddess statue; so cute.

@Mrguy you know that guy
It's usual in the Zelda fandom (of wich I'm part, only I haven't been able to play the game yet because the disc reader on my wii died and I have to replace it) to hate new games.

For example the fandom hated Wind Waker until Twilight Princess came around, then Wind Waker was awesome game and Twilight Princess sucked (indeed it was worse than Wind Waker though), TP hate has been decreasing recently.

I'm glad things seem to have turned around for the 3DS in terms of software.

Is Mario Kart Wii a pack-in game now? Or is it really getting that much love?

@ShinAntonio

Yeah. It's a pack-in game now, but most of those sales came from when it was a individual product.

Was there any doubt the 3DS woulden't turn things around? I mean come on, this is the king of handheld market we're talking about here.

@Mrguy you know that guy

Definitely doesn't hurt that Mario 3D Land is frikkin excellent.

@baby sea tuna

I should amend that to *except S 5-"castle" because f*ck that level.

Do those numbers mean Zelda sold horribly in Japan?

@Hawaii Jeff

Wow, you're right. That's odd...

@Hawaii Jeff

Well, Zelda's never been that popular in Japan, so 300K's an alright number for it.

@Hawaii Jeff

Not at all. Japan's gaming population isn't that huge. A few hundred thousands sold is considered a good performance. Just look at previous Joystiq articles with both software and hardware sales. It's just not that large a market.

@AGuyOnTheInternet
Not really true. A few hundred thousand for a top-rank Nintendo title would be poor even in the smaller market (compare with the million+ for Mario Land / Mario Kart on 3DS).

The difference is that in Japan Zelda isn't ever as successful as it is in the West; it's a second-tier title well behind Mario or Pokemon (or non-Nintendo titles like Dragon Quest, Monster Hunter, etc). Example from this post: Kirby's Return to Dreamland probably sold more copies. Doubt that happened in any other region.

I have no idea why but that's the way it normally goes. So anyhow, they might have expected a little better from it in Japan, but probably not much.

One exception: iirc Ocarina of Time on 3DS sold really well but that may be because, uh... it was also the ONLY game available on 3DS for months.

@xxxsam
The 5th Professor Layton (Sequel to the one mentioned in this article has done quite well over there too. 1 month after the console's release, it was at 230,000 sales. So there were other good games out there during that time (or at least 1 other game).

They're all excellent games, so that's nice. But 32 million copies of Mario Kart Wii? F*ck me, that just makes other 1st party exclusives look silly.

@A Sandwich
Wow.. And MC Wii isn't even the best in the series. It's fun don't get me wrong, but wow. It actually makes me sad that Zelda hasn't done better. Those aren't bad numbers at all, but I feel it deserves more. I guess nothing trumps the appeal of Mario.

with so many wiis out in the wild, 3m zeldas seems so low.

When you can count the number of good games on one hand for the system then odds are that those few games will sell a lot.

Well, Zelda isn't nearly as globally popular as Mario.

@DekuTree
And yet, how is it that we've gotten the short end of the stick when it comes to some of the pre-order extras here lately? If I recall, there were several other countries that got some pretty cool bonuses with OOT 3D. Don't get me wrong, that soundtrack is pretty cool, but it was very limited since you had to register it the first day in order to get it.
Wasn't there like a steel book for Skyward Sword in another country? And then, if Zelda is not nearly as popular in Japan as it is here, then why the heck isn't Hyrule Historia not being released here???!!!
Ok, my rant is over.

For the console with the most sales worldwide, you can't dress up the failure of Skyward Sword's numbers.

3.4 Million.... THAT'S IT?? 3rd party 360 games can do that... Guess soccer moms don't like link.

CONFIRMED: 3.4 million Nintendo Fan boys left.

@StarcasM
This troll has a point. The sales are not terrible but they are not good for the series. (Twilight Princess apparently sold 5.8m on Wii, so it's only about 2/3 that, so far at least. And TP sold over a million on GC as well.)

It's a shame since this is a candidate for best game on Wii - controls-wise, it's pretty much the game the system was made for. It's also (mainly for that reason) the most innovative Zelda game for some time. Wii owners who skipped it are definitely missing out.

@StarcasM
i just said the same thing and no one voted for me :(

Purely in my opinion...

Zelda was a bit of a snoozefest. There's a few nice changes from the previous titles, but the pacing was slow and I was never captivated by the story. Controls took a few dungeons to get used to, but eventually worked out. Only a few of the bosses were actually challenging.

Mario was pretty good. The first "half" of the game seems to pander to the more casual, new Mario players. It was a breeze running through much of Worlds 1 through 8. The real Mario levels come in the Secret Worlds. Still working on the special last level. It is frustratingly difficulty, but truly the ultimate 3D Mario level you will ever play.

what? its a zelda game.. they never sell as much as mario games.

I wonder how much more Zelda would have sold had Skyrim not been released?

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The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

Super Mario 3D Land breaks 5 million sold, Skyward Sword at 3.4 million

Reader Comments (49)

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 1:31PM Roxas560 said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 1:38PM KungFuChaosNinja said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 1:39PM Nergy said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 1:46PM BrianH said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 1:46PM freelancer91 said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 1:47PM jsx92 said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 1:50PM Roxas560 said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 1:56PM lolkeits said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 2:11PM ripvanwinkle said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 2:13PM flalex05 said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 2:42PM DekuTree said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 3:18PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 3:39PM bm111 said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 3:50PM shouryuuken said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 4:30PM simplicity14 said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 4:56PM OGC said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 6:10PM xxxsam said

Posted: Jan 28th 2012 6:59AM bm111 said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 1:36PM KungFuChaosNinja said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 1:47PM Scuffles said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 2:04PM Mrguy you know that guy said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 2:18PM Teliko said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 4:31PM simplicity14 said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 6:18PM xxxsam said

Posted: Jan 29th 2012 10:11AM matias said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 1:38PM CoconutSkittle said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 1:40PM ShinAntonio said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 1:43PM Mrguy you know that guy said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 1:41PM Mrguy you know that guy said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 2:34PM baby sea tuna said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 2:55PM baby sea tuna said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 1:43PM Hawaii Jeff said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 1:45PM A Sandwich said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 1:49PM Mrguy you know that guy said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 3:44PM AGuyOnTheInternet said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 6:30PM xxxsam said

Posted: Jan 29th 2012 2:14PM Professor L said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 1:44PM A Sandwich said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 11:58PM picxel said

Posted: Jan 27th 2012 1:44PM gevenstaines said

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