Analyst: U.S. Galaxy sales a 'borderline failure'

by Chris Greenhough { Nov 29th 2007 at 5:00PM }

Having already suffered from lower-than-expected sales in Japan, we thought Super Mario Galaxy fared better in the U.S., where it shifted 500,000 copies in its first week. Indeed, Nintendo was happy to crow about the records the game set, pointing out that Galaxy was the best-selling Mario title ever in its first week, as well as the strongest one-week debut of any Wii game to date.

But look, here comes RealMoney.com columnist Michael Comeau to spoil the party. Despite describing the game as "the best $50 I've spent this year on a videogame," Comeau argues that more should have been expected from Galaxy in raw commercial terms, and then compares it (unwisely, in our humble opinion) to the opening week sales of Halo 3.

"Nintendo says [Galaxy] sold 500,000 copies in its first week, which makes for a great headline. But in my eyes, that's a huge, borderline failure," Comeau told TheStreet.com. "I think it's an incredible disappointment when you consider [...] that Halo 3, for example, sold 3 million copies."

We can't entirely disagree with Comeau's assertion that the plumber's game should have sold more copies stateside, but we do find the Halo 3 comparison slightly iffy, and for a few reasons.

Firstly, it should be noted that at the time each game was released, U.S. homes still contained fewer Wiis than Xbox 360s, while Bungie's game was also supported by the mother and father of all marketing campaigns. And let's not forget that shooters are probably more to the taste of U.S. audiences, or that Halo 3 launched a full month and a half before Galaxy, at a time when there was less competition, and when the usual avalanche of top-quality holiday titles had yet to be triggered.

Mind you, he gets brownie points for describing Galaxy as "at least six times better than Halo 3."

[Via NeoGAF]

Tags: Americas, Halo-3, MichaelComeau, north-america, sales, US

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

troy @ Nov 29th 2007 5:07PM

A quick look at the latest vgcharts.com figures show halo sitting ONE SPOT BELOW mario party 8 on the NA charts, a game that came out in May. So screw this analyst. Nintendo games sell for more than 2 weeks before dropping off the charts. Wii's sell for more than just the week Halo 3 comes out.

The Fuzz 53 @ Nov 29th 2007 5:08PM

I think you'll see a lot more copies of Galaxy picked up as Christmas presents, where as Halo 3 is a game for hardcore gamers and should have expected that mass bulk of sales to be in the first week, if not day.

curtisbyers @ Nov 29th 2007 5:15PM

Does anyone else think the term "huge, borderline failure" doesn't make any sense?

MJG @ Nov 29th 2007 5:18PM

I was all set to post my first comment in a good long while to say exactly this, but you've beaten me to the punch.

racecar @ Nov 29th 2007 7:16PM

Huge, borderline failure = SMG first-week sales OR current US-Mexico relations. You decide.

-racecar
http://everybodyvotes.blogspot.com

James @ Nov 29th 2007 5:20PM

The other thing to think about is, Nintendo gets some money for every Mario they sell, and some for every Wii that people buy because of Mario. Microsoft gets money for every Halo they sell, but they *lose* money on ever Xbox somebody buys to play Halo. They're lucky if those Halo 3 bundles you see in Costco actually break even (I doubt it).

Plus, as the OP noted, I'd be interested to see what each game netted when you subtract marketing costs from revenue.

Dirk Dorkelson @ Nov 29th 2007 5:59PM

Are you sure Microsoft is still losing money on every 360 sold? The console has been on the market for two years, and it's only come down in price by $50. You'd think they'd have lowered their manufacturing costs enough that they're at least breaking even on the hardware by now.

CJ @ Nov 29th 2007 6:18PM

I think the $1 billion charge for extending the 360 warranty to 3 yrs cuts into the profit margin some.

http://tech.yahoo.com/blog/patterson/2902

Dirk Dorkelson @ Nov 29th 2007 8:14PM

I don't think a one-time charge last fiscal year counts against what it costs to manufacture consoles that are being sold today. It wouldn't surprise me if they're now selling the units for more money than they cost to manufacture.

opnickc @ Nov 29th 2007 5:23PM

I agree with troy - Nintendo, especially lately, has been defying the industry convention of launching games with huge fanfare and achieving 70% of the games total sales in its first week. When Brain Age launched, I thought it was going to flop simply because there was no fanfare at the launch (how pathetic has the industry become that a game has to be considered awesome before it even launches?). However, we all see what happened there. Zelda TP, NSMB on the DS, Wii Play, Mario Party 8, Nintendogs, Brain Age, and most every major Nintendo title in the last couple of years still post steady sales month after month.
Galaxy may have lost the sprint, but the race has just begun.

Ryan G @ Nov 29th 2007 5:26PM

I can't remember seeing a single Galaxy ad, but the Halo 3 ads are still fresh in my memory.

Nintendo needs better marketing, maybe?

Skippy @ Nov 29th 2007 7:32PM

And actually that makes the 500,000 copies sold even more impressive. Imagine if they had the same giant ad campaign as Halo 3. Where's my Mt. Dew Mario Galaxy Game Fuel?

Kenology @ Nov 29th 2007 5:32PM

Selling a million copies in two weeks on a one-year old system is actually fantastic. This game will surely have some sturdy legs as well.

Mr Khan @ Nov 29th 2007 5:34PM

Galaxy's are the norm for a AAA title, Halo is the exception, by no means the rule

like saying every AAA Novel that comes out has to match the Da Vinci Code

Valien @ Nov 29th 2007 5:36PM

Comparing SMG to H3 is absurd. For one, M$ marketing campaign is huge and everywhere I turned I saw commercials, billboards, ads, etc.

SMG ads? Huh? where? hehe.

Plus the US gaming scene is full of FPS games. A platformer doesn't stand a chance against that IMO.

Tristan @ Nov 29th 2007 5:50PM

there were tons of Mario ads on virtually every channel not to mention the same ones with them playing it in those homes with that characteristic tiny car and music.

Halo 3 still surpassed Galaxy, in terms of the commercial side, they probably made and are still making more off of H3 then SMG.

Jonathan @ Nov 29th 2007 5:58PM

Your FPS comment makes little to no sense for a few obvious reasons.

All I have to say is the advertising campaign for Halo 3 is moot here. The people who rushed out and bought Halo 3 week(or day) 1 would have bought it no matter what, tv commercials or not.

It can also be argued that with magazines and gaming website/blogs, both Halo 3 and SMG got plenty of exposure.

It just comes down to the fact that many people don't want or care for 3D Mario games. It's true, and that's it.

Nate @ Nov 29th 2007 5:37PM

I've seen the Mario Galaxy ad a few times now, it's like most wii ads, the 2 guys come in, wii would like to play, game clips... I honestly don't remember the Halo 3 ad... Maybe because I don't like the Halo series and I do like Mario games?

Jonathan Tran @ Nov 29th 2007 5:51PM

the Halo ads were an entire documentary miniseries that probably cost like... over 9,000 million dollars to make.

vidGuy @ Nov 29th 2007 5:59PM

There was lots of ranting on the gonintendo boards about this. My argument boils down to this: considering the target market and the lack of advertising, 500k is a huge number and quite the success. Mario will continue to sell well through the life of the Wii, while Halo 3 sales are nearly done. Halo 3 was also a marketer's dream and very atypical of the industry. The guy doesn't know what he's talking about, but neither does any other video game "analyst", so I don't know why this piece is "news".

Jonathan @ Nov 29th 2007 6:15PM

Huge, borderline failure? What the hell does that even mean?

raindog @ Nov 29th 2007 6:24PM

There were nowhere near the expectations for Galaxy that there were for Halo 3. No news coverage, no midnight launch events except at the Nintendo store in NYC, and my local Target and Wal-mart ran out of preorders weeks before, reducing me to Gamestop trolling.

Actual conversation at Gamestop the day before Galaxy's release (I had preordered it a week earlier but was stopping in to troll the bargain bins with a friend:)

Me: So are you guys doing a midnight launch thing for Mario Galaxy?

12-Year-Old-Clerk: No way, man, I'm gonna be sleeping like a baby.

14-Year-Old-Manager: Yeah, me too. But aren't you gonna be catching up on WOW?

12-Year-Old-Clerk: Oh man, I forgot to tell you. I was BLAH BLAH my party and BLAH BLAH quest BLAH BLAH BLAH....

So it seems pretty obvious to me that no one but this one analyst expected the release of Galaxy to be like that of Halo 3.

Jeremy @ Nov 29th 2007 6:45PM

I have to say that on G4TV they said something like Halo 3 sales and Halo 2 sales were the highest first week sales of any game. I understand why. Halo is such a big success in FPS and with a strong online mode the game rules. But at the same time (it has been said before) Halo sales only are out the roof for the first few weeks and then they die off. Now Mario or most gaming sales tend to stay steady for months. It is always hard to say what game will be the next big thing. Nobody will ever know how the sales does till a year or two has passed. Even I waited two weeks to pick up Galaxy but I still bought it and I still love it. Even on my iGoogle page I have a ticker that has the most popular Wii titles of the hour by Amazon.com and Wii Play is number 2 with Galaxy at 1 heck even LOZ:TP is at 12 (and it was out a year ago).

McHoffa @ Nov 29th 2007 6:55PM

I think Nintendo should have gone nostalgic on us... Taken the super mario bros 3 ad where it zooms out from the US to show mario's face, then continued to zoom out into space until it shows the whole galaxy... instead of using the generic Wii Would Like to Play format

samfish @ Nov 29th 2007 11:08PM

I was hoping they would revive/rework that ad, too. That would have been such a freakin' awesome commercial if they had done that.

ChrisCanberg @ Nov 29th 2007 7:09PM

This is actually true. The sales for this game are much much lower than I expected.

I was just in Target today, Best Buy yesterday, and Walmart 2 days before, all for Christmas shopping, and from those three huge distributors, I saw a lot of copies of SMG still there.

Strange, yes. But as is comparing Halo to Mario in any sense.

I still also think that Super Mario Galaxy, though I already finished the entire game inside and out twice, is in fact the best $50 I've spent on anything all year. Its a shame that not many people can also pretty much bathe in its glory.

Mr.Nitemare @ Nov 29th 2007 7:18PM

there are some huge misconceptions about Halo releases....
Their sales aren't the norm, but also their marketing dollars spent aren't the norm either. What most people don't realize is that those marketing dollars take away from the bottom line, not to mention the production costs, if you take into consideration that the combination of those two total 100 million dollars or more, you realize that it takes many more copies to sale just to break even. Also, the norm for Halo sales is to sale big the first week and then to have a usual drop of in sales by a high percentage rate the following weeks, this is because Halo fans are "hardcore" fans that as soon as the game is released they "have to have it right away" as Nintendo has proven since the DS is that although their audience is not mainly "hardcore" they still love games, the only difference is that they aren't the "have to have it right away" types,therefore instead of one week of stellar sales, the sales continue along similar lines for weeks, or even months to come.

On a similar note, i thought that recently we were told that Nintendo was having trouble keeping up with the demand for their proprietary discs for Wii games, could this shortage also have catered to supposedly lower than expected sales?

evan @ Nov 29th 2007 8:05PM

well we just got it in aus, it wasn't flying off the shelves but there were a few people in there buying it same time as me, so steady she goes.

what can i say, it's incredible and anybody who doesn't pick it up is a fool...

halo3's marketing was a shocker, i've never seen anything like it for a videogame... on par with "blockbuster hits" such as the day after tomorrow (and as quickly forgotten?)

mario i think is definitely going to continue to sell, i've had 360-owning friends come round and play and leave going "must buy wii, must buy wii"

SJAM @ Nov 29th 2007 8:06PM

Well, if some greasy suited weirdo says so...Quick sell your Nintendo stock!

Sonic_13 @ Nov 29th 2007 8:12PM

If 500,000+ copies sold in the first week is a failure, then what does that make every other game?

ChiefyPoo @ Nov 29th 2007 8:25PM

I don't see how he can say that it's a borderline failure. No game is going to sell anywhere near as many copies as Halo 3 on opening day/week. But give it time. There are plenty of games, just from last gen that have outsold Halo 2 in the long run. Day one sales don't mean long-term sales.

c.Lake @ Nov 29th 2007 9:37PM

What a D*ckhead. "Mario Galaxy is a falure, because it doesn't compare to Halo 3". That guy is the clear winner of "Analyst say the stupidest things" Award.

Come-On! Nothing is going to top Halo 3's launch, NOTHING. Not even the second coming of Jebus -- so f*cking, get over self.

Dale @ Nov 29th 2007 10:36PM

I would say that it's a failure when the first proper new entry in arguably the most successful and well-loved video games franchises in the world, released for the current most buzzed about system, sells 1/6 of what a game on a rival platform did in the same amount of time.

I own both systems, own SMG and have zero interest in Halo 3, but even I can see that outwardly it's not a great indicator of the vitality of the Mario series. I hope the longtail sales show it catching up, but it's not the given you all seem to think.

Elsnerma @ Nov 29th 2007 11:21PM

Well, seeing as how most Xbox users bought a 360 specifically for Halo 3 (whether they'll admit or not), the sales figures for Halo 3 aren't surprising. However, how many OTHER 360 games sell anywhere close to Halo 3 in their first week, or even Mario Galaxy for that matter?

Hopefully Smash Brothers will be a bigger success than Galaxy, that way they analysts can talk about how 1 million copies in the first week is a "borderline failure"

Neko @ Nov 30th 2007 3:59AM

I don't belive that this is bad news for Nintendo. They intend Super Mario Galaxy to sell through out the Wii's lifetime. Halo 3 won't carry the XBox, because consumers will be clamoring for a Halo 4. Not to mention that Nintendo has to sell far fewer copies of a game to turn a profit than Microsoft or Sony do. Ultamately Nintendo will profit more from Galaxy than Microsoft will from Halo 3.

Paul Martin @ Nov 30th 2007 9:25AM

Analyst should go back to school!

He clearly doesn't understand that, upon only LOOKING at the games: Halo and Mario are different genres. They are both video games, yes, and when that's ALL you take into consideration, you might make the same mistake. But if you're an analyst worth your salt, you should be looking at all the details, not just the ones that feed your own ego as an analyst.

DammitBran @ Nov 30th 2007 11:48AM

I'm pretty sure he said this just to get his name out. Int's not news if an analyst says, "good job Nintendo, you released a hit". But when someone says "SMG: Huge borderline failure" People will read the artice just to figure out what the hell he's smoking.