"How popular are the various nintendo franchises really? my take." (warning: Huge wall of text)

Very interesting post I found over at gamefaqs:

https://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/189706-nintendo-switch/75567323

I've copy-pasted the whole thing here:

"To be blunt, a lot of people on this board seem completely delusional about how popular certain Nintendo franchises are, especially compared to other franchises (last seen in the Splatoon 2 VS Breath of the Wild thread, where people were acting like Zelda was somehow out of Splatoon’s league). Looking at how games in various Nintendo series have actually sold, I’d like to take a stab at clearing up just how popular the different series are. I’ll be making use of tier lists to show which series are roughly comparable in popularity, rather than trying to rank each series against the others. Sales will be the main factor, but fan fervor, critical acclaim and system-selling capabilities can decide the placement of borderline cases. Also, I will mainly focus in Nintendo’s “hardcore” series, not Brain Training, Wii Fit and the like. With that out of the way, let’s start with the truly heavy hitters:

S Tier:

Pokemon core RPGs Mario Kart 2D Mario platformers 3D Mario platformers Smash Bros.

These are series that will consistently sell 10+ million copies or at least be able to boast top-selling games on the platforms they appear on. Usually huge system sellers too.

Pokemon is a no-brainer – in terms of sales the series has an incredibly high floor (Pokemon Black 2 and White 2 are the worst-selling main games at 8.5 million) and a ridiculously high ceiling (Pokemon Red/Green/Blue sold 31 million, Yellow alone sold nearly 15 million). The main games nowadays sell like 16 million on average, and even remakes easily break 10 million. So much for being a fad…

Mario Kart is also ridiculously popular: The DS and Wii versions did incredible numbers (over 23 million and nearly 37 million respectively, though the Wii version benefited from bundles later on), the attach rate of Mario Kart 8 was absolutely insane and even Super Circuit and Double Dash are among the top-selling games on their respective systems.

2D Mario platformers can boast jaw-dropping sales numbers throughout their history: Super Mario Bros. sold 40 million, Mario Bros. 3 sold 23 million, Mario World managed 20 million, and later on both the 3DS and Wii NSMB games broke 30 million. That said, the comparatively weak performance of NSMB2 and especially NSMBU are worth noting, especially the way NSMBU showed that 2D Mario platformers today aren’t really able to sell consoles, at least not semi-expensive consoles. That said, selling 5.7 million on a console like the Wii U is still impressive.

3D Mario platformers are also extremely popular – they will either break 10 million (as Mario 64, Galaxy and 3D Land did) or be among the top-selling games on their systems (as Sunshine and 3D World are). Mario Galaxy 2 performed the worst all things considered, neither breaking 10 million nor ranking that high among top-selling Wii games, but that was a relatively late sequel, so some drop-off was to be expected. I’d also add that while 2D Mario platformers have greater overall sales, the system-selling capability of 3D Mario platformers is probably way stronger nowadays.

The Smash Bros. sales, with the exception of the original, are somewhat comparable to Mario 3D platformers – hell, Melee outsold Sunshine and Brawl outsold Galaxy. Smash 4 arguably underperformed slightly (it didn’t break 10 million on the 3DS, and was outsold by Mario 3D World on the Wii U), but having the game release on 2 systems partially explains each version selling slightly less than you’d expect. Smash 4 did actually sell nearly 14 million combined, outselling even Brawl.

There is one more franchise that you could argue belongs in the S Tier (and no, it isn’t Zelda), but I will explain why I didn’t put it there when getting to the A Tier series.

Numbers:

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Video_Game_Sales_Wiki

A Tier:

Animal Crossing Zelda Splatoon Donkey Kong Luigi’s Mansion

Games in these series are more or less consistent multi-million sellers, though there’s going to be a lot of varying performances and outlier games, given the difference in age and game count.

Animal Crossing – this series boasts not one, but TWO games that have sold more than 10 million copies. However, the GameCube’s Animal Crossing game (basically the series’ breakthrough, given how the N64 game was Japan-only) doesn’t seem to have broken 3 million, and the Wii’s Animal Crossing only sold 4 million. This weakness on home consoles prevents me from ranking the series as S Tier, despite its dizzying peak sales. Of course you could argue that this is unfair, given how the Pokemon core RPGs have been handheld-only until now, but the difference is, we’ve actually witnessed the comparatively weak performance of home console AC games. Meanwhile, does anyone doubt that an exclusive core Pokemon Wii RPG (Gen 5 for example, skipping the DS) would have broken 10 million?

That said, Nintendo consoles without portability is probably a thing of the past, and if Animal Crossing Switch is released and sells around 10 million I’d consider that sufficient to move the series into S Tier.

Zelda is another interesting case: Ocarina of Time arguably sold like a game from an S Tier series (4th best-selling N64 game ever), Breath of Wild will almost certainly end up breaking 10 million eventually and even Twilight Princess sold 8.5 million copies combined. That said, the series as a whole is definitely not S Tier material even if you go exclusively with the 3D Zelda games, which are significantly more popular than the 2D ones, having both a higher floor and a higher ceiling in terms of sales. Majora’s Mask and Skyward Sword only sold somewhat in excess of 3 million, and even relatively strong performers struggle to break 5 million.

The series does have critical acclaim, fan fervor and the system selling factor going for it though, so if Breath of the Wild manages to expand the fanbase the series might become a S Tier contender in the future.

People might argue with me against Splatoon, but to me this a no-brainer – a lot of popular Nintendo series performed horrible on the Wii U given their usual standards (we’ll get to one such series soon enough), but Splatoon sold nearly 5 million, boasting an attach rate comparable to that of Mario 64. Furthermore, if you look at a list of the Wii U’s top selling games, the only games to outsell Splatoon belonged to S Tier series, except launch game Nintendo Land, which also benefited from bundles. No matter how new it is, Splatoon is the real deal – and if Splatoon 2 ends up breaking 10 million, I’d consider that sufficient to move the series into the S Tier.

Food for thought: If Nintendo had delayed the Switch into 2018, kept BotW Wii U exclusive and otherwise supported the Wii U until 2018, would BotW have managed to outsell Splatoon? I kinda doubt it, especially since the Wii U getting a sales boost and Nintendo continuing to produce Wii U consoles would also have benefited Splatoon, enabling it to easily break 5 million.

Donkey Kong sales are all over the place, but the series has so many high points that I find it impossible to keep it out of the A Tier: Donkey Kong Country sold over 9 million (more than any individual Zelda game has sold so far), DKC2 sold 5 million, Donkey Kong 64 sold 5 million and Donkey Kong Country Returns sold 6.5 million. However, Tropical Freeze got Wii U’d HARD, and apparently barely broke 1 million (see why Splatoon’s performance is so impressive?). Still, people baffled by why Nintendo had Retro Studios prioritize Donkey Kong over Metroid clearly have not been paying attention the overall sales numbers of the respective series (SPOILERS for future posts: Metroid is actually a borderline case – in the sense that it barely makes it into the B Tier).

Luigi’s Mansion is a surprise A Tier series that even I barely saw coming, but the numbers do justify it: The original sold around 3.6 million, which is very good for a GameCube game, but could be somewhat explained away due to it being THE “Mario” launch game for the system. Then Dark Moon went ahead and broke 5 million on the 3DS! Hell, the only non-S Tier 3DS games to outsell it was Animal Crossing (which pretty much IS an S Tier series on handheld systems) and Tomodachi Life. Yeah, I’d say Luigi’s Mansion has earned its spot among the big boys.

Feel free to offer your own takes, as well as add series I’ve missed or left out (I won’t for example be including Mario spin-offs like the Mario RPGs that actually star Mario, or most of the casual franchises).

B Tier:

Kirby Yoshi Star Fox Metroid Wario Land WarioWare Punch-Out!!

Basically, games in these series are somewhat consistent million sellers (though as we’ll see, some of the series are anything but consistent) and the top-selling games in the series might sell several million copies. Also, I'm not really ranking the series, what's important is the Tier they're in, not when I get around to mentioning them. With that out of the way, let's get started:

Kirby is basically the poster boy of this tier: Kirby games in general almost always sell more than 1 million (Dream Land actually sold more than 5 million!), often closer to 2 million. Rainbow Curse however seems to have been Wii U’d and failed to break 1 million. Vgchartz has that game at 0.58 million, and that’s basically the best we got, since it sold so little that it doesn’t make it onto Nintendo’s own rankings. I’d chalk that one up to the Wii U (you might even argue it was merely a spin-off), because the Kirby series in general is quite strong.

The Yoshi series has fewer games than Kirby, but Yoshi games usually sell very well: Yoshi’s Island sold 4 million, Yoshi’s Story sold 2.85 million and Yoshi’s Island DS sold 3.3 million. However, its recent games have done comparatively poorly: Yoshi’s New Island and Wooly World both only sold around 1.3 million – which in the case of WW is actually pretty good, because Wii U.

Star Fox is quickly sliding out of the B Tier: While Star Fox 64 sold a whopping 4 million and the first game sold 3 million, things get worse and worse from there: Star Fox Adventures sold 1.87 million, which is still really solid on the GameCube, but Assault barely broke a million at most. Far worse is how Star Fox Command apparently only sold 0.5 million, and Zero only selling a little over 0.4 million. The 3DS remake of SF64 did however make it into Nintendo Selects, which suggests it eventually broke 1 million. A mere remake selling 1 million does suggest to me that the series still has enough life left in it to belong in the B Tier for now, especially given its stellar pedigree, but the way things are going Star Fox and Fire Emblem will trade places in a few years.

Compared to Star Fox, Metroid is actually comparatively healthy – I was indeed a bit too hard on it earlier. No Metroid game has broken 3 million, but Metroid Prime did sell 2.8 million, while the first game sold 2.7 million. The games are usually consistent million sellers, but Other M doesn’t seem to have broken 1 million (except on vgchartz), and Hunters only barely sold 1 million. Metroid Prime 3 failing to sell 2 million is in my opinion also pretty bad, because that game came out when the Wii was extremely popular, it was very hyped up and at the time faced very little competition from other “hardcore” Wii games. Basically, the series was losing momentum even before Nintendo abandoned it – but the extremely enthusiastic reception the two recently announced games have received suggests that it is in no danger of pulling a Star Fox.

Wario Land is another series that lost momentum and it sadly has yet to be revived: The first Wario Land sold 5.3 million, and the subsequent handheld Wario Land games generally sold around 2 million each (Wario Land II apparently did significantly worse than the others at only 1.5 million, which I find hard to understand or even believe). However, Wario Land: Shake It! seems to have barely broken 1 million, and that’s the last we’ve seen of this series. A real shame – I love the series and given how even a later game like Wario Land 4 sold as much as 2.2 million, it definitely deserves another chance, as the numbered entries sold as well, if not better, than the Kirby games currently do.

WarioWare is probably a big reason Wario Land went missing, which the sales don’t really justify: The first game on the GBA barely broke 1 million, and Twisted! sold less than 1 million. However, unlike WL the series took full advantage of the Wii/DS years: Both Smooth Moves and Touched! appear to have sold more than 2 million copies, which is good, but not actually any better than how the Wario Land sequels used to perform on the handhelds.

Punch-Out!! basically makes it onto the B Tier thanks to the NES original, which sold 3 million, and the Wii game that sold something like 1.3 million. Basically, the peak sales of the series is pretty impressive, and it has performed pretty well relatively recently as well. I can’t find any information indicating that the SNES entry broke 1 million, but even so I’d argue the series qualifies as a B Tier.

Numbers:

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Video_Game_Sales_Wiki

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_best-selling_video_games_by_platform

http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/ (ugh, I know, but for some of these games I couldn’t find any other total sales figures, or the numbers were so dated they wouldn’t have taken account of whatever legs the games had.)

Feel free to offer corrections if you have other or better sources.

C Tier

Fire Emblem F-Zero Kid Icarus Pikmin Pilotwings Golden Sun 1080° Wave Race Excite series

Games in these series are potential million sellers, but somewhat struggle to pull that off consistently, or convincingly.

Fire Emblem was until recently only a D Tier franchise and even with its Smash Bros. representation and Western releases, games in the series had failed to ever break 1 million. Then Awakening came along, managed to draw in a whole new audience and shattered past franchise records, selling 1.8 million. Controversy surrounding Nintendo Treehouse mucking up the localization of Fates didn’t prevent that game from pulling off comparably impressive numbers. Echoes is a recent release, but if it too eventually manages to comfortably break 1 million it might already be time to move FE into the B Tier – and even if Echoes doesn’t manage that, I’m sure the next non-remake FE game will. While its overrepresentation in Smash Bros. remains impossible to justify, Fire Emblem is definitely on the rise.

F-Zero is, I’m happy to say, a somewhat stronger series than I initially thought: The SNES original actually sold 2.8 million (benefiting from being a launch game mind you, and apparently bundles too), and F-Zero X managed 1.1 million copies sold. Maximum Velocity also (barely) sold 1 million, as a GBA launch game. However, GP (which seems to have sold very poorly) and most tragically F-Zero GX failed to reach 1 million copies sold (vgchartz has that one at 0.65 million). As such, it might be understandable why Nintendo has abandoned the series (it’s natural to assume that the amount of work that went into GX was not justified by its sales), but still, I can’t help but wonder how well the series would do on the Switch, a popular console/handheld that represents a huge visual leap over the GameCube.

Kid Icarus is weird, because unlike say, the NES and the Wii entries for Punch-Out!!, the two first games and the 3DS Kid Icarus games are nothing alike. That said, both the NES and the 3DS game are fairly comfortable million sellers – the NES entry sold 1.76 million and Uprising sold 1.18 million (these are old numbers, before it even became available in digital format I believe, and certainly before benefiting from Sakurai Bias in Smash 4 – total sales of 1.5 million are probably more accurate). Myths and Monsters seems to not have broken 1 million though. I definitely think Kid Icarus has B Tier potential if it builds upon Uprising’s foundation – despite a vocal minority complaining about the controls, the game was actually very well received by gamers (check the various user scores) – hell, it’s my personal favorite original 3DS game of all time. It has lots of great characters and a world that provides fertile ground for future adventures

Pikmin is a fairly typical C Tier franchise – the first game sold 1.2 million in US and Japan alone (vgchartz has total sales at 1.6 million, managing to provide inflated numbers for both US and Japan, which we DO have credible numbers for, making that 1.6 million estimate look very dubious). Pikmin 2 apparently failed to break 1 million, although vgchartz again begs to differ (1.2 million). Pikmin 3’s sales are especially disappointing, as it seems to have sold less than 1 million despite for a good while being THE big Wii U exclusive and intended system-seller. I know it’s the Wii U, but still, it should have broken 1 million given the hype and lack of competition (vgchartz has it at 1.17 million tho).

Regardless of whether or not the vgchartz numbers have anything to do with reality, it really does show how much trouble the Wii U was in when a series like Pikmin was ever relied on to sustain/save the console in its first year. Splatoon 2, the Switch’s comparable post-launch exclusive, is in a completely different league.

Golden Sun started out very strong, selling 1.65 million and actually being something of a flagship GBA exclusive, one that really showed off the huge leap from the Game Boy Color. The Lost Age also did pretty well, selling 1.1 million. Dark Dawn – not so much. There is nothing to suggest it ever broke 1 million, and vgchartz only has it at 0.79 million. This is almost certainly a series that would make good use of a second chance, if only the next game is actually good.

Pilotwings is a remarkably consistent series, with its SNES and N64 entries both breaking 1 million, albeit barely, and in very favorable conditions (Pilotwings 64 in particular probably benefited a lot from just how few games the N64 had early on). Resort on the 3DS seems to have failed to hit the 1 million mark, but it might have come very close – vgchartz has it at 0.96 million. Depending on just how much these entries depended on being launch games for their sales, the series might actually only have D Tier strength, but it has yet to truly be exposed as such.

Wave Race and 1080° have remarkable similarities – strong first entries on the N64 that sold 2+ million copies (though Wave Race almost broke 3 million, while 1080° only just broke 2 million), followed by GameCube sequels that performed comparatively poorly and failed to sell even 1 million, resulting in the series being abandoned. Wave Race: Blue Storm on the GameCube not breaking 1 million when it was a launch game and got good reviews (vgchartz has it at 0.6 million) is especially hard to explain away. You might argue both these series are really D Tiers at best, but I dunno, I’d expect both series to be capable of selling around 1 million on the Switch if Nintendo surprised us with solid new entries.

The Excite series just keeps getting weaker and weaker – the NES game actually sold 4 million, and Excitebike 64 sold 2 million. However, Excite Truck failed break 1 million on the Wii, despite being a launch game in NA on a super-popular console (vgchartz has it only at 0.53 million), and Excitebots sold even worse and wasn’t even released in Europe. You can argue that the Excutebike games are the only mainline games in this series and the others are just spin-offs, in which case Excitebike would be a clear B Tier – unless you also factor in Excitebike: World Rally, which I quite frankly didn’t even know existed before writing this entry. I think C Tier is the right place for the Excite series for now, though it probably has more potential for future success than either Wave Race or 1080°. I mean, it even got a Mario Kart 8 track in its honor...

D Tier

Xenoblade Advance Wars Mother/EarthBound

Series that produce games selling between 4-500 thousand copies and 1 million, though actually breaking the 1 million barrier will usually prove beyond them.

I was tempted to put Xenoblade in the C Tier, not just because the Wii original is one of my favorite games of all times, but because it scores highly in terms of fanbase fervor, critical acclaim and (for those very reason) system selling capabilities. Plus, vgchartz has both the Wii original and Xenoblade X at 0.9 million copies sold, making it enough of a borderline case already that those factors should push it over the edge. However, I just don’t trust those numbers – Xenoblade games are precisely the kind of hardcore gamer darlings that vgchartz always seems to overtrack, and we don’t have any total sales estimates that are actually credible given how the games are sub-1 million sellers (compounded by NPD not even tracking the first game in the US because it was a retailer exclusive). In the end, I can’t rely on a site as inaccurate as vgchartz to decide a Tier placing (we DO have enough reliable data to indicate that both XBC and X comfortably sold more than 0.5 million, so even low-end estimates would make it a solid D Tier).

That said, I do wish to point out that Xenoblade like no other franchise I’ve talked about here so far (one upcoming franchise has had it worse tho) has been systematically held back by outside factors: The first game suffered from the NOA why-don't-you-want-our-money debacle and a NA release that was both very late and restricted to GameStop, as well as the game suffering from insufficient supply (it sold for like 100 bucks on Amazon at one point). Xenoblade X suffered from being on the Wii U, and the 3DS port was a New 3DS exclusive, a system that barely had a userbase at the time. Xenoblade 2 will be the first time a Xenoblade game is released relatively early on a successful system with a significant userbase and unless the game is a dud I predict it will be the first million seller of the franchise, propelling it into C Tier.

Now on to Advance Wars – I remember how people on the 3DS board used to ask why on earth we never got a new Advance Wars game for the 3DS. This is why. The series has never broken 1 million, or apparently even come close. According to vgchartz, the sales range from 0.70 million to 0.39 million. If you want to include the Battalion Wars games as well, the picture becomes even bleaker. Basically, this series is nowhere near as strong as its fans always makes it out to be, and seems completely incapable of breaking 1 million.

A series Nintendo is asked even more frequently about is EarthBound – I don’t know nearly as much about this series as most of the other Nintendo franchises I have talked about, but thankfully a EarthBound fansite has provided us with the total sales of these games:

http://earthboundcentral.com/2009/02/earthbound-series-sales-figures/

These numbers seem to check out. Basically, the games sell in the range of 400K, or 0.4 million. And MOTHER 2 (EarthBound) was released in the US, where it sold less than half of what it did in Japan, so it’s hard to justify these games as potential million sellers even if they got the much-wanted international release. It’s a D Tier franchise for now, though it is sad that Nintendo doesn't seem inclined to give its Western fanbase a chance to prove otherwise."