Let's Talk About Thousand-Year Door's Sales...

I don’t know about you guys but a $60 game selling nearly 2 million copies in 5 weeks on a most-likely AA budget is a success in my eyes.

I think you’re forgetting a big piece of this. Mario RPG was a holiday game. A LOT of parents bought it for their kids. Paper Mario came out around the summer. A lot of kids (the main audience) just can’t get the game at the moment.

I do think it’s worth remembering that in the report, Nintendo stated that it was off to a good start. I think they realize that this and Origami King have released in different circumstances (COVID, original game vs remake, middle vs end of system lifespan, etc.) I do think that it’ll end up getting well into the 2 million range. And I also think they have received the message about classic Paper Mario, the fact we got this remake at all proves that, plus the surveys about original characters and mechanics and stuff.

nintendo is pretty deliberate with their scheduling. they wanted a game to sell some number of copies in the fiscal quarter, so they put ttyd there. and according to them, the sales were "solid", so they met their own goal. everything is a-ok dude ! (probably)

I will say, I dont think Arlo is considering how much of a cult classic Mario RPG is and how rabid it's fan base is either. Whenever he compares both TTYD and RPG, he makes it seem as if the fan base for RPG was not as big, but I feel that's a bit of echo-chamber on his part, since he's a huge fan of TTYD, of course he mainly sees just that part of the fan base. Idk either way I love both

Also important to remember that Thousand Year Door hasn't experienced a Christmas season yet. Lot of parents are going to be looking through nintendo's catalogue, and hey! if little Timmy liked one Mario RPG, why not get him another?

I really wish Nintendo Selects was something Nintendo was still willing to give us. There's so many switch titles I'm interested in playing, but I just can't afford $60 games with how expensive everything else is these days. Nintendo seems dead set against giving consumers any sort of a deal this gen and it's effectively priced me out of most of their catalog.

5:29 I'm not sure how much this affects other people, but old switch games are expensive. The rest of the industry will sell old titles for $10-$20 while Nintendo hangs around $30-$40. You can get 2-3 games on a different platform for the price of one first party nintendo title.

Another factor you didn't mention is that worldwide economy is REALLY borked right now. I can tell from first hand experience. I would have loved to pick Thousand-Year Door day one... but right now I don't have the spare funds for that purchase. :<

May not look impressive now but keep in mind this is only reporting on the sales a month after the game's release, and it's almost reached the amount of gamecube TTYD's lifetime sales (spanning three years). I'd say that's pretty good news.

I feel like you let your favoritism for certain games (Metroid Dread, Pikmin 4, TTYD) cause you to have unrealistic expectations for how they should sell. There was no way TTYD would sell 3 million in only 1 month. TOK sold 3 million after 5 months and a holiday season. Mario RPG also launched 1 month before Christmas and sold 3 million. We’ll see how TTYD does with the holiday boost.

I can't say I'm a big fan of people trying to look at and compare these sales numbers at face value, because at the end of the day, you just can't. Nintendo's financial report also showed that profits are significantly lower across the board right now. That's some very important context that simply wasn't taken into account here. A game's success shouldn't be solely determined by how many units are sold.

Yeah it may not be GREAT. BUT to be fair it was only 5ish weeks after release when those numbers were based. We still have the holiday season coming up too.

You gotta remember, RPG launched around Christmas, when parents were buying gifts. Also, at least Nintendo got the message with RPG that we want more creativity in these games, if RPG didn't sell as much as it did we would be in MUCH more trouble.

Idk what the stress is, 1.7 million is pretty successful for 5 weeks of sales. I would say thats enough to green light a new paper mario in this format

People blaming this on the whole 60 fps debate are widely misunderstanding where the majority of Nintendo game sales come from to begin with. That barely would’ve caused a dent in sales, if any at all. The majority of people buying this game are casual fans that likely don’t even know what the term “frame rate” means. It’s the same as the infamous Pokemon Sword and Shield tree where people on Twitter make a big stink about it, yet it ultimately is irrelevant to the larger consumer base. I honestly think that the reason for the decline in sales is the same reason that caused Mario Party Superstars to perform worse relative to Super Mario Party: people already had a Paper Mario game for the switch, so many decided they didn’t need a second one. For casual fans, one game in a franchise is often enough, and it’s difficult to sell them another when they’re satisfied with what they have. It’s quite literally the “we have Paper Mario at home” mindset.

For what it's worth, Thousand-Year Door: 1.76 million in 5-6 weeks Fire Emblem Engage: 1.61 million in 8-9 weeks

There is also the fact that Nintendo has talked about the new console after Super Mario RPG came out and before TTYD came out.

This remake was my first paper mario game ever and I absolutely loved it. Here's hoping those numbers jump at christmas time...

witht his vids intro i thought it sold like 500k or something or like 700k, 800k? 1.7 mil sounds pretty good to me considering this is during the very end of the switch and all?