At Tokyo Game Show 2007, Sega predicted that their upcoming title, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, will sell 4 million units, Bloomberg reports.

The ambitious goal was announced by Masanao Maeda, a corporate director at Sega's game software division, but he didn’t said declined to give a specific time period for the sales target.

As Bloomberg noted, the forecast is equivalent to almost 20 percent of the games Sega Sammy sold in the year ended March 31.

Maeda explained that the estimation is based on the huge success of Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS and he added that the upcoming Beijing Olympics will also drive sales of the title.

Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, the first game to feature both iconic gaming mascots, Mario and Sonic, will be released for Wii and Nintendo DS this Christmas. The game was announced in March this year.

Sonic The Hedgehog is one of the most popular videogame icons of all time with over 44 million games sold worldwide while Mario games alone have sold more than 193 million worldwide.

Published by SEGA across Europe and North America, and published by Nintendo in the Japanese market, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games is licensed through a worldwide partnership with International Sports Multimedia (ISM), the exclusive interactive entertainment software licensee of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

According to SEGA, players will compete in events that take place in environments based on the official venues of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games and the games will compete as or against SEGA’s gaming mascots such as Mario, Sonic, Luigi, Knuckles, Yoshi or Tails.