>>712678365Three Houses outsold Dread and Prime remastered
Pikmin 4 outsold Dread and Prime remastered
Kirby regularly outsells both those games despite releasing a new game every eyar practically.
And I didn't even mention Xenoblade, while no individual title outsold Dread (3M) or Prime remastered (1M) but yes when you look at XB2 (2.7M), came close, and then Xenoblade 1 and 3 both sold aroudn 1.8M, which means the series has sold over 6M on the console. And it's a "niche" RPG that's only been around for the past 10 years or so.
Why isn't Metroid comparable to Animal Crossing? Animal Crossing is also relatively new when compared to Metroid, having been around since the late 64 era into the Gamecube, and starting off modestly but growing more and more each year. Metroid has not seen that growth.
Once again, if we're talking from a business perspective, Metroid Prime 4 was never going to be a huge financial success. It's more something that's being made for the diehard fans. Not to sell consoles, not to sell a bunch of money. It's just there to say "hey, we still care about Metroid and we said we'd release this game when we revealed it 8 years ago and now we're going to finally deliver". That's all. It's great that it's being released, but let's set our expecations realistically. It might sell maybe 5M overall, and that would be a great success, but Splatoon sold that much on the Wii U, and it was a new IP. Just saying.