14 DAY TRIAL // Nintendo has announced that its New Super Mario Bros. Wii has managed to sell no less than 3,002,753 units on the Japanese market, becoming the quickest title to reach this milestone. It only took the game seven weeks since its release on December 3 to sell 3 million units, with close to a million of them sold in the first week, when it broke another record, this one held by Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Not even the mighty Final Fantasy XIII could stand up to Mario and his companions.
New Super Mario Bros. Wii has also managed to perform well outside of Japan. The NPD Group numbers for December show that the game succeeded in selling 2.8 million units in the United States, which makes it the third best selling title of the year, after Modern Warfare 2, which was released for the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3 and the PC, and Wii Sports Resort.
Reggie Fils-Aime, the president of Nintendo of America, said before the launch of New Super Mario Bros. Wii that the game would perform better than Modern Warfare 2. Analyst Jesse Divnich of EEDAR also suggested that over its lifetime, the Mario title would outsell the shooter from Infinity Ward and Activision.
Nintendo seems to be focused on creating intellectual properties that have staying power when it comes to sales. The first releases of Wii Sports and Wii Fit continued selling well past the first six months after their release dates and regularly appeared in the charts, like Mario Kart Wii.
And now it appears that sequels like Wii Fit Plus and Wii Sports Resort are picking up that mantle, while New Super Mario Bros. Wii is quickly becoming the best selling Mario-powered title of the last few years. The character will appear in 2010 in a sequel for Super Mario Galaxy.