Zelda: Skyward Sword and Super Mario 3DS Land sell half a million each

Nintendo of America bossman Reggie Fils-Aime spoke with USA Today regarding sales figures for their two big recent releases, Super Mario 3D Land for DS and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword for Wii.

Nintendo of America bossman Reggie Fils-Aime spoke with USA Today regarding sales figures for their two big recent releases, Super Mario 3D Land for DS and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword for Wii.

Super Mario 3D Land has sold more than 500,000 copies since launching on November 11th. This makes it the fastest selling portable Mario game in history. While Mario has enjoyed most of his success on home consoles, beating out games like the DS megahit New Super Mario Bros. is no small feat.

Unsurprisingly, being the first major 3DS release that isn't a remake helped 3D Land move 3DS systems. 3DS sales more than tripled the week after the game launched, and rose another 49% the week after that. With Mario Kart 7 coming on Sunday, Nintendo is probably looking forward to a strong holiday season for its new handheld.

Meanwhile, in Hyrule, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is no slouch either, selling 535,000 copies in its first week. This means it's the fastest selling Zelda game ever. Yes, faster than Ocarina of Time.

Speaking of the Wii, don't count it out yet. The console itself sold 500,000 units on Black Friday, making it the strongest Black Friday in the console's lifetime.

Staff article by Rhody Tobin (November 29, 2011) Rhody likes to press the keys on his keyboard. Sometimes the resulting letters form strings of words that kind of make sense when you think about them for a moment. Most times they're just random gibberish that should be ignored. Ball-peen wobble glurk.