Well, let's see. Here is my explanation for why SMS didn't sell as well as it should (Though 1 million copies isn't THAT bad...)
There are genereally 2 waves of gamers in the world. The first wave, which grew up with the NES and SNES (Like me), and the 2nd wave, gamers that are growing up right now with the PS2, GCN, and XBox. Mario was a big deal with the 1st wave gamers, as were other game mascots like Sonic. Eventually, these first wave gamers grew up. (I turned 16 last week). Problem here being that these first wave gamers are now more "mature" (Though if you look at my high school swimming team, many of the members are hardly as mature as a 7 or 8 year old.), they don't really want to play games with "Sunshine" in the title on a purple system... (Shallow, but it seems to be the concensus of much of my class) There are a few gamers like me and many of you that didn't forget about how fun Mario is, but a good deal of them (Me, for instance) are deterred by these others who deem the GCN and everything associated with it "childish" or even "gay". This first wave? They now play games like Halo or GTA: Vice City or, for those who actually OWN a GCN, Metroid Prime.
This 2nd wave of gamers (Those that are about 6-9 right now) was the age group targeted by Nintendo with the GCN. The problem is, the time between SMS and the last "real" Mario game (SM64) was so vast that few remember Mario. And thus, this game, though mostly bought by this 2nd wave, was not nearly as successful as it rightfully should have been.
I chalk it up to 2 factors:
1. Nintendo's poor marketing strategy (Why SUNSHINE??? Or purple? Don't they see that the mostly shallow population of first wave gamers think words or colors like that are gay? And don't even get me started on the handle...) which prevented Mario and the GCN from becoming was it could have been.
2. The overall dematurity of the First wave generation (Most of them, anyway) which ironicly, came with them "growing up". Amusing.
Don't take offense to this. Most people my age who still play Mario are far more mature than most people who dismiss Mario as childish and instead play more "Mature" games like GTA. Those are the idiots that get thrown in jail and that get shot before they are 30.
I could go on, but everything following this line would be a tyrade on our generation, so I'll quit here to avoid damaging my tenure here.
I don`t suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it.