Only thing I'm saying about Smash Bros in here: Pureauthor's post is mostly on point...
Pureauthor said:
Unless your opinion of Nintendo characters/music/setting are in the negative zone, the game would most definitely be less fun without the Nintendo properties.
...but it does overlook the possibility of neutral feelings, and I think most others arguing any side of this are doing the same. It's one thing to say that Street Fighter would suck with Sesame Street characters who are (presumably) disliked around here, but what if Street Fighter was populated with fighters who people had no feelings toward beforehand? ...Well, actually, it
is. The SF cast built recognition through gameplay and forged their own positive that way.
(I'd also say that the same has happened for some of the lesser-recognized Smash Bros. characters: whether Marth and Roy had a history was mostly irrelevant since people outside Japan had no idea what that history consisted of. [Yes, I know Roy hadn't had his own game by the time of Melee's release, but he at least had the history of his series.] And there are other characters from low-visibility and/or older franchises: Ness, Lucas, Pit, Ice Climbers, Mr. Game & Watch, Ike...)
I think it's an oversimplification to center the argument around these two categories of positive and negative feelings. If a character one is fully indifferent toward (Sheik, for example) was ousted in favor of an original character of the equivalent archetype (fast ninja in this case), the game would remain basically the same for that person--it wouldn't "most definitely be less fun." And then there's the possibility that a character one is indifferent toward could be replaced with a character that person
likes; that would actually become an improvement.
Personally I'm just about half and half on characters that I feel negatively about versus characters that I feel positively or neutrally about--less than 2% in favor of the positive/neutral category. If Smash had gone with its original Dragon King design that was going to start from the ground up and create original characters, I wouldn't be too hung up over it. I like the Street Fighter cast, after all, and the same goes for Soul Calibur, and those characters had no built-in history. I do value the soundtrack far too highly to have wanted to give that up, though, so overall I'll take what I have to--but I suspect that some people are indifferent toward even the music. To such people, I wonder if the dichotomy being set up by all sides here looks amusing.
[Edit: To be fully clear, I'm not saying Smash's selling power would be anywhere close to where it is without the Nintendo IP power behind it--I wonder if it would have even a fifth the sales--but only that, to some individuals who are admittedly outliers, it isn't a particularly relevant aspect of the game.]
Now back to actually talking about sales--which is where I'm staying.
ethelred said:
It stacks up pretty well against the earlier entries overall, though it's significantly lower than last year's Harvest Moon.
Code:
Mineral Town GBA 20,050 14,749 10,537 161,430
Mineral Town (Girls) GBA 10,757 - - 108,362
Colobuckle Station NDS 22,926 14,619 9,439 107,136
Colobuckle Station (G) NDS - - - 112,811
Island I Grew Up On NDS 70,980 30,360 24,925 304,348
Tree of Life Wii 18,733 7,236 - 25,969
It's also lower than Rune Factory 2's first week, which is kinda funny. Could we be seeing the spinoff transcending the mother series?
(I hope that quoted correctly.)
I'm surprised the series isn't affected more considering how often new games seem to be released. But being surpassed eventually by Rune Factory would be pretty cool, actually: I think there's more untapped potential in that setting and I really want to see it drawn out.