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SEQUEL WATCH: The latest data is in, and Nintendo’s New Super Mario Bros 2 was the biggest selling individual format game released last week.
It managed No.2 in the Chart-Track All-Formats Charts, beaten by Square Enix’s Sleeping Dogs.
But how well did it perform really? Should Nintendo be happy with the performance of its latest platform?
Much like New Super Mario Bros 2, the original New Super Mario Bros arrived at around 18 months after the launch of the console (Week 26 2006). But the market was in a far healthier state. Games retail generated roughly 16m during the launch week of New Super Mario Bros, in comparison, this week the High Street generated just 11m. There were no economic woes to worry about six years ago.
Also, DS was on the rise. The new DS Lite had recently been launched and Brain Training was performing strongly. During the launch week of New Super Mario Bros, 2.48m was made from sales of DS software alone. In fact, handhelds in general was enjoying a bumper summer as the No.1 game was Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories on PSP.
And yet, despite all this, New Super Mario Bros 2 has this week sold more units during its first seven days on sale than the original – 29.4 per cent more, to be exact.
So what does this tell us? Obviously Mario games have been continued big sellers on 3DS, there have been times this year when the Top Four 3DS games have all been Mario titles – Mario Kart 7, Super Mario 3D Land, Mario & Sonic and Mario Tennis Open. So it hardly comes as a surprise that New Super Mario Bros 2 has performed admirably when compared to its original.
It is also an encouraging sign for Nintendo that in some areas 3DS is tracking ahead of its predecessor.
Yet the real test for New Super Mario Bros 2 is how its sales will grow. The original New Super Mario Bros kept selling for months and years to follow, and by the end of 2006 it had sold just shy of 450,000 copies.
That’s a mighty high figure for any game to reach in today’s troubled retail market. Yet even if New Super Mario Bros 2 doesn’t quite hit those heights, it does look likely that it will be the 3DS game to beat well into Q4.
The data used in this report does not include digital sales of New Super Mario Bros 2.
