F-Zero sold 5.8 million units as a game franchise.

2.85 million units on original F-Zero game in 1990.
1.1 million units on F Zero X in 1998.
1 million on F Zero Maximum Velocity in 2001.
700,000 on F Zero GX in 2003.
200,000 on two games released in 2004, which were the same and repackaged.

Recently, a guy bought $40,000 worth of Nintendo stock, where he claimed the reason was just an excuse to ask Nintendo executives at a shareholder meeting, why they haven’t continued the F-Zero franchise in nearly 20 years.

Despite that possibly being the dumbest reason to buy a stock ever, he wasn’t given a good answer by the exec’s, who offered the standard “Oh, we’ll consider it!”.

Decided to look at some history/numbers and see if there was a good reason.

First up, the original F-Zero game which sold 2.85 million units.

It was created by Nintendo for their Super NES in 1990, where out 1,757 games to be released for that console, F-Zero was the 14th highest selling game ever for it.

Also, of the top 20 games for SNES, six were Mario games, three were Donkey Kong, two were Dragon Quest and one was a Zelda game. Meaning, F-Zero was one eight games released that made it to the top 20, which wasn’t part of a large franchise previously.

This means it did extremely well and would suggest Nintendo would keep wanting to invest in it.

The sequel game out for the Nintendo 64 in 1998 and while not as successful, it did get the title as the 43rd highest selling game ever for the Nintendo 64, which is good seeing how the console had 393 games.

The third one was F Zero Maximum Velocity in 2001, where Nintendo moved it into a handheld game for the Game Boy Advanced and once again, it did well being the 37th highest selling game ever for the Game Boy Advanced, which is solid, seeing how that system had 1,538 games.

The fourth one was for Game Cube and the first one to not be a top 50 for the franchise, but it just edged missed that, being in the top 60 and missing that by about 50,000 units.

The final two games were repackaged versions of the first Game Boy Advanced games and poorly marketed.

Overall summary, the sales were really solid on this franchise and it did well.

The second factor was the idea for the franchise itself.

F-Zero being a game I played as a kid was just a simple racing game.

Which that actually works as a franchise, because it’s easy to merchandise.

Nintendo’s two biggest franchises are Pokemon and Mario, which are both merchandise rich, where Pokemon has 82 billion in merchandise revenue and Mario has had 4.5 billion.

F-Zero being in the car/racing space, it’s easy to merchandise, with an example being Pixar’s Cars, which has made 19 billion dollars just on merchandise, mainly in toy sales.

F-Zero seems like a really easy franchise to produce toy sales on, which makes it even stranger Nintendo got rid of it.

Looking at both sales numbers and just the core idea of the franchise, Nintendo getting rid of it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Until pointing out Mario Kart.

Mario Kart has had 14 games since it was introduced in 1992 and has sold 166 million units across all games.

It is one of the staples of Nintendo and just a sales comparison.

Super NES

F-Zero sold 2.8 million units.
Mario Kart sold 8.8 million units.

Nintendo 64

F-Zero sold 1.1 million units.
Mario Kart 64 sold 9.9 million units.

Game Boy Advanced

F Zero sold 1 million units.
Mario Kart sold 5.9 million units.

GameCube

F Zero sold 700,000 units.
Mario Kart sold 7 million.

Mario Kart for every Nintendo console has been in the top five for highest selling games.

That’s why F-Zero was discontinued and might never return.

Nintendo already had a racing game with Mario Kart, where despite F-Zero doing well, it just can’t hold a candle to Mario Kart as a franchise.

This is a pretty good example of companies having multiple successful products, but discontinuing some of them, to avoid taking away from the core product.

F-Zero was a fun game as a kid and I’m sure there’s a demographic that’d prefer it to Mario Kart, but the sales/merchandise just made F-Zero a waste of time.