For the first time since its 2017 debut, the consistently well-selling Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is no longer one of the top 20 best selling games in the United States for a given month.
Honestly this is a pretty big deal. Mario Kart 8 has been an absolute sales juggernaut. It's been largely speculated that mario kart 9 has been delayed just because 8 keeps on making millions. It's just so uncommon to see a game sell in such huge numbers for over 6 years like that, especially because the game itself is way older than that and it didn't even get any expansions/dlc until very recently.
It is not surprising to see an older game continue to sell a lot, especially a child/family oriented game, on a child/family oriented console. A game with basically no real competition in its category.
It is surprising every time a game sells this many copies, because it's so rare. By Wikipedia's count, only 5 other games have sold better, and for the length of time it's been on the sales chart, we can realistically only compare its success to GTA V and Minecraft.
You’re right, that is a really incredible run. I think their just digging their heels in and being a contrarian because they want to stand by their hot take that journalism is bad now.