Japan, you suck.  Nintendo, you suck at Japan.

In related news, everyone eventually dies and the sun appears to rise in the morning and set at night.

While the numbers might appear low note when I say that Brawl and Mario Kart Wii aren't even in the top three in the best selling Wii titles list. Wii Sports Resort is likely to have long legs at retail. Not to mention that Japan is now a handheld country with less and less people spending time at home and preferring gaming on the go.

That's pretty much it.  The climate has significantly changed there, meaning they relate less and less to the rest of the home-console-playing territories.  And Nintendo hasn't done well at selling games that fell outside its casual line-up.  The non-casuals have really migrated to handhelds, so Nintendo's teams are having a hard time keeping non-casual console gaming relevant there despite releasing quality products.

What are all these Japanese people out doing? Don't there feet get tired of walking? Do they all eat at restaurants and go to the movies rather than eat at home and watch TV?

If you think Nintendo is having it bad, Sony and MS are doing much worse. Sony went from owning Japan to coming in fourth to Nintendo and their own PSP.

The climate for console gaming in Japan is bad for everyone since gaming has changed significantly for the Japanese.

ShyGuy: TYP and superfamicomplicated can elaborate on this, but the Japanese spend more time working outside their homes and the kids spend more time in school than at home. They have more working and school hours than the rest of the world, forcing them to stay till late. Not to mention they sometimes work on Saturday, leaving Sunday as the only day off, limiting time at home significantly.

Notice I didn't mention the other console companies.  They've already fallen out of the picture, leaving Nintendo with the responsibility.

If non-casuals have migrated to handhelds, why has Nintendo refused to bring over Soma Bringer and ASH? I really want those games over here.

Thats because the non-casuals IN JAPAN have migrated to handhelds.
This whole discussion is related to Japan.

Ah, oops.

So how long until Resort hits a million y'all think?

Before July end's I'm going to guess. Japan will sell around 700k alone by then and the US will probably open with about 550k from launch to the end of the month.

Why didn't Nintendo have a larger initial shipment? Did they not expect the initial demand to be as high as those other two games you mentioned? Or could they not produce as many because it includes Wii Motion Plus?

They are bottlenecked by the number of Wii MotionPlus units that are available worldwide. Also Japan is a very mobile country, handhelds has always been popular there so it's no surprise that the DS and PSP are successful there. Japan tends to be trendy as well, while the Xbox isn't sucessful there the big successful American company in Japan is Apple.

i thought it would have been 1 million already.

I'm sure Nintendo was quick to deliver a 2nd shipment.

But how much will it be? I'm going to guess close to the first one in size or a bit less. I'm going to assume both 1st and 2nd shipments will sell out quickly.

Yeah, it's definitely worth noting that the Japanese spend a much greater amount of time away from home than you probably see in any other country.  A heavy public transportation system, incredibly-dense population centers, 6-day school week, near-slavish work hours...definitely a fertile ground for handheld dominance.  In fact, you could probably argue that the Japanese are just so damn tired when they get home from all this walking, working, studying, and subway riding that casual games at home just fit the situation better.  It's still not a great sign to see a game like this sell so spectacularly when others fail when Nintendo (corporate) only gives a damn about the Japanese market.

As long as they work slavish hours making us awesome games and hardware, I'm cool with that.  In fact, I wholly endorse it.

Yep. My wow character isn't going to level itself up

What amazes me is that the Japanese are willing to pay so much for their games. It's not uncommon for their console games to cost over $60-70 and handheld games to cost almost $50. Wii Music was about $60 when it released

Hahaha, you call that much? Our handheld games here cost 40€ which is curerently 56$. HD games are 70€, 99$. Last gen games were 60€, 85$ and the Wii fortunately brought games down to "only" 50€, 70$. Even worse, when a game comes out i the US at a budget price like 30$ it tends to cost 40€ here (examples are RE4Wii, Munchables, Klonoa), some are even more insane like the full 60€ for I <3 Katamari which was 30$ in the US (same for Alien Syndrome Wii). Well, at least Castlevania Judgment was only 30€ (42$)...

Alien Syndrome was full price in America, too. I should know, I paid it.

Oh, I thought I read something about a 30$ price... Doesn't really matter, I bought Alien Shooter 2 instead which was only 20€ (now you can get the improved version for a fiver on Steam) and really good.