 Hey everyone, welcome back to the Nintendo Prime. We have a interesting thing to talk about today because I have been a Metroid fan most of my life. I'm not gonna say I played it when I was really young back in my little kid days. You know, my first experience was like punch out on this, on the NES. I remember playing some Ninja Turtle game on the Game Boy, Mario Land, all that stuff. So I grew up on that aspect and then I kind of switched to PC gaming for a bit, Age of Empires, Doom, Duke Nukem, Wolfenstein, et cetera, all that stuff back then. But as time has gone on, I have become more and more of a Metroid fan. In fact, I founded metroidweakie.org in case you guys have ever been to that Metroid Weekly, not the big super popular one, right? There's the most popular Metroid Weekly in the world. I didn't make that one, but I did make metroidweakie.org. And I've been fascinated with this franchise over the years. And it's interesting because Metroid has not actually ever been a major seller it actually sells basically as well as Kirby does, which is to say not stupendous, especially for the amount of money it takes to create a Metroid game. But that's neither here nor there because today we're gonna be talking about how Metroid Dread, that's right, the Metroid 5 game that is closing out the current arc of the first four Metroid games is possibly going to become the best-selling Metroid game of all time. And I don't think it's going to be even close. And we have some data to actually back this up. Now before we get into that, I gotta remind you we are giving away a Switch OLED system. We're actually gonna give it away live on stream in early October before the system comes out. However, to be entered, all you need to do is be subscribed to the channel. That's it, that's all I'm asking you. Just click that little subscribe button. I would appreciate of course if you hit the bell, set it to all notifications, like the video, comment and all that. But the only requirement is that you are subscribed. So thank you so much for that. And I wish whoever wins it luck. All right folks, let's get into this. We've asked some data from a couple of days ago from GameStop of All Places that posted up their top 10 pre-orders over the last two months, or essentially what I like to call the top 10 pre-orders for Nintendo Switch since E3. And well, here's the list. Come on list. Come on. I heard it, all right. So we got Metroid Dread at number one, followed up by Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl Double Pack at number two, Mario Party Superstars at number three, Pokemon Legends Arceus at number four, Shimagami Tensei five at number five. Isn't that funny, five at five. Pokemon Brilliant Diamond at six, where the heck is Shining Pearl in this top 10? That's weird. WarioWare get it together at seven, Doki Doki Literature Club plus at eight, Sonic Colors Ultimate at nine and then Advanced Wars one and two, Reboot Camp at number 10. That game comes out in December, I'm pretty excited about that one. But you notice Metroid Dread is at the top. And it's had a Pokemon. Now granted, if you combine all Pokemon pre-orders together, it's probably number one, right? You got the Double Pack, you got Diamond. So you put that all together, it's probably number one. But it's essentially the best selling individual game right now in terms of pre-orders at GameStop for Switch. Now I'm not sure where this ranks overall because games that didn't post an overall. So I'm not sure where this ranks for other pre-orders out there. I'm sure the Call of Duty's of the World might be a little bit higher, although maybe the Activision Blizzard controversy lowered it down. But what's interesting is that Metroid Dread is the most pre-ordered game on GameStop right now and likely going to remain that way until Switch OLED comes out on October 8th because hey, that's when the game comes out, it comes out the same day and there's even a white Switch OLED that seems to commemorate Metroid Dread. By the way, that is the Switch OLED we're giving away is the white version. But I went back and I looked at some of the series history of sales. Now this sales data isn't necessarily definitive. This is just based on the most recent confirmed reports. As an example, the best selling Metroid game of all time right now is Metroid Prime, but it's listed at 2.82 million. And I've seen some other listings where it's listed at 4.2 to 4.5, but those seem to be estimates. Nintendo's official numbers, the most recent report says 2.82 million. So not even 3 million in sales. However, if you're someone who thinks it's sold more than 4 million, that's okay. I understand that. I don't think we have actual good data for this. But it has Metroid Prime at number one. Again, for 2.82, then the original Metroid release and you can consider the original Metroid release obviously a success. You know it's sold 2.73 million back in 1986 on the Nintendo Entertainment System. That's obviously pretty good numbers. The problem was it didn't grow from there, right? So Metroid 2, which is the third best selling game, actually sold about a million less in 1991. So it came out five years later on the Game Boy and sold 1.76 million. You might go, well, that was on the Game Boy, right? Well then, okay, let's continue on. We got Metroid Fusion on the Game Boy Advance at number four. In 2002, that sold 1.68 million. Metroid Prime 3, corruption at number five. On the Wii, in 2007, sold 1.63 million. Super Metroid, again, that was on a home console. That one's at number six and that one was released three years after Metroid 2, Samus Returns. And sold 1.42 million. Metroid Prime 2 Echoes is at number seven. Selling 1.33 million in 2004 on the GameCube. We have Metroid Other M chiming in on Wii back in 2010 at 1.11 million. Metroid Zero Mission at number nine and 2004 selling 0.84 million to 840,000 copies. At number 10, we have Metroid Prime Hunters on the DS in 2006, selling 720,000. And then Metroid Prime Trilogy on the Wii, which I wish were to sold more, only sold 650,000 copies, or did release in 2009, aka towards the later part of the heyday of Wii. So that's, it's interesting when you look at those sales and you go, basically, the series peaked twice, right? The original Metroid came out, nothing was able to match that until Metroid Prime. And Metroid Prime kind of, in a way, felt like the breath of the wild of that Metroid series. We always talked about, oh, what's gonna be the breath of the wild? It's Pokemon with the archies, it's gonna breath of the wild, the Pokemon series. Metroid Prime, basically breath of the wild, the dang Metroid series, right? Brought it into a modern way, brought it into a first person perspective, totally changed things around and sold record numbers doing that. And it did that on a system that's one of the Nintendo's worst selling platforms. Gamecube was not a really big seller and yet the best selling Metroid game of all time was on that platform. But again, as you saw, Metroid Prime 2 was way down that list, Metroid Prime 3, way down that list. Like, they peak with these games and they're unable to keep that success going. But Metroid Dread is an interesting one because one, we haven't had a 2D, or that's not even called 2D, because I think that's being, you know, that's not being fair to the graphics. They are 3D visuals, but we haven't had a side-scrolling, brand new Metroid game. We did have Samus Returns, which was a reboot of Metroid 2 on the 3DS, but we haven't had a traditional, side-scrolling Metroid game in 19 years. Or basically two decades, right? It's been almost two decades since we've had one. And I think that is part of the appeal of this game, is it's been so damn long since we've had it. And then for old-school Metroid fans, you have the whole Metroid Dread name, which for those who don't know, was a canceled Metroid game brought back. And this leads to the whole idea of the Dread name's gonna appeal to the older gamers. The 2D side-scrolling's gonna appeal to the older Metroid fans as well. But I also think there's something about this game that just feels fresh. The way that gameplay looked at E3, the fact that they had it at E3, they did two big gameplay segments on Tree Else. I think really sold this game to a lot of people who maybe have never even played Metroid before because it doesn't look like the kind of game you need to have played prior Metroid games to understand. And so that's important. And it just looked like a lot of fun. A lot of these Metroidvania, a lot of these 2D side-scrolling platform, or a puzzle shooter kind of games like this have gotten really, really popular today in the indie scene. There's no end to these. And everybody keeps calling them publicly, oh, another Metroidvania game. Here's another Metroidvania game. Here's another Metroidvania game. And now we actually have one officially side-scrolling from the Metroid franchise. So I almost feel like the indie game popularity of this kind of play style has actually helped boost the sales of Metroid Dragons. Everyone's gonna play those indie ones and go, well, obviously the Castlevania or the Metroid should be the gold standard in their own dang categories, right? So I think there's some hype driven by that. I think there's some hype by it's been 19 years. So if you remember in the heyday of the Wii, Nintendo could basically just shit out a game and it would end up selling five plus million units. And we're sort of at that again with Switch. It really doesn't matter what Nintendo puts out. It sells really, really well. Skyward Sword HD as an example is what? God, we're exactly two months off from release today. Today is literally August 16th, one month from when Skyward Sword HD came out and it's still the number one selling video game week over week on Amazon. Like a month out. That game is likely going to outsell what it did on the Wii. And you kind of look at the Metroid Dread pre-orders. You look at the trend of sales of different games on Switch. The last Mario Party game, the best selling Mario Party game of all time. The new Mario Party game coming out might become the best selling on top of the old Mario Party game. You know, beating it out. We saw even Sword and Shio came out and sold the most amount of units by a combo Pokemon game since generation one. Like there has been this continued success line on Switch where no matter what Nintendo puts out, it sells really, really well. And on top of that, Nintendo's been putting out a lot of quality games. There have been some caveats. Like Mario Tennis, Aces is great, but the single player is a little bit lacking. You know, Mario Tennis is great, but Mario Tennis Super Rush is great, but at the time it lacked online rankings and all that. Now they added that all in. And then there's still that big button, the single player mode, where it's not really what they promise with the whole RPG element. That's not really what it is. But those butts exist, but there's the however the gameplay in Mario Golf Super Rush is fantastic. The gameplay in Mario Tennis, Aces is fantastic. Like while there's been these butts and these caveats, bottom line is the game, the core aspect of the game, the core gameplay is there. And that has been true in Xenoblade Chronicles 2, even though there was the butt, the frame rates are low, the resolutions though, however the gameplay is hardly fantastic. The storytelling is really, really good. So Nintendo has been putting out, I feel their greatest generation of consistently really solid releases. Now some of them are great to some of the best ever, the odysseys of the world, the breath of the wilds of the world, right? Even Xenoblade Chronicles the Finner of Edition was a really cool story add on in there to kind of push it into the whole future connected stuff. There's been a lot of really great work on Bowser's Fury mode tacked on to Super Mario 3D World. Yeah, 3D World's a pretty good game. Bowser's Fury mode is a plus material. And we keep seeing this consistently, this generation of hardware where Nintendo's giving us quality game after quality game. And so there's a lot of faith that Metroid Dread, even if there's a butt, oh, it's a really good game, but it's missing this or that. However, the actual core gameplay is probably gonna be utterly fantastic. And because there's this trust right now that Nintendo bare minimum is going to put out a game that is very, very high quality in terms of the gameplay. And that's what primarily Metroid fans just want more high quality Metroid gameplay, setting aside the story, setting aside the level design and the boss fights. We just want really solid just gameplay. We want Metroid, we want new Metroid, right? It's been since Other M. We haven't had a new Metroid since Other M, so like it's a big deal. And no, it's not the promised Metroid Prime 4, but it's a nice primer. And I feel like the hype build up for this from fans is bigger than their fan. Nintendo has a system releasing the same day that's basically the Metroid Dread system. They pushed it hard. They're gonna be pushing it hard here. I feel like starting next month, there's gonna be some sort of Nintendo Direct, and from that point forward, they're gonna start really pushing Metroid Dread really, really hard. I mean, that's not even the first game they have coming out, right? We got WarioWare coming out, and they're not even pushing that, sorry, because Nintendo knows WarioWare is kind of quirky. It's not really probably going to be a 10 million seller. And by the way, I don't know that Metroid Dread's gonna be a 10 million seller. That is going maybe a bit too far. But is it crazy to think that Metroid Dread could sell four, five, maybe six million units? I don't know that that's so crazy. I think by the end of this holiday season, Metroid Dread's gonna be the best selling Metroid game of all time. If I'm wrong, that's cool. But I usually don't see this. We're two straight months. It's pre-ordered over Pokemon. It's pre-ordered over a Mario Party game. Are you kidding me? The last Mario Party game? So 15 million, how the hell is this game being pre-ordered more than that? The hype for Metroid right now is sort of quietly in a way, really, really solid to the point that I think this might be the best selling one yet. And then the question is, can Metroid Prime 4 top it? What the wait and see? I think so. Now there's also that whole debate, is it worth $60? I think sales are clearly proving that $60 is obviously the right value. And I don't buy the whole argument that it's not worth $60 because it's a side-scrolling game. I'm sorry, that is ridiculous. I don't think game pricing should be based on the style of the game. Oh, if it's side-scrolling, if it's top-down, screw you, screw you, it could still be great. It could still be worth $60, come on now. That's not getting to that. Let's actually play the game before we're like, oh yeah, that game ain't worth $60. Excuse me, can we play it first, please? Like, game looks really good to me. I have zero complaints about Metroid Dread to this point from the art direction to the gameplay to the story so far to even some of the cutscenes they've shown. I got zero complaints. So let's wait until like, oh my God, the game's only two hours or something before we start bitching. By the way, it should be longer than two, but we don't know. Like, that's the way that we have something concrete to complain about other than saying, well, it's not Metroid Prime, who gives a shit? We're still getting Metroid Prime. It's just gonna take a little bit longer, all right? All right, folks. I'm Nathan Roberts from Nintendo Prime. Thank you so much for tuning in and I'll catch each and every one of you in the next video.