Pokémon Sword and Shield Sold 6 Million Units Worldwide at Launch - Sales
by William D'Angelo , posted on 04 March 2020 / 4,555 Views
The Pokemon Company announced Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield (NS) sold six million units worldwide at launch and Nintendo of America announced the game sold more than two million units in just two days in the US.
Selling six million units worldwide at launch makes it the fastest-selling Nintendo Switch game ever, beating previous record holder Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which sold five million units at launch.
“This past weekend, millions of people began their Pokemon journeys through the new Galar region,” said Nick Chavez, Nintendo of America’s Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing. “With such a momentous launch, Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield have proven to be two of the must-have games this holiday season.”
Nintendo revealed games in the core Pokemon RPG series has sold more than 240 million units worldwide since the release of Pokemon Red and Blue in 1996.
Here is an overview of the game:
In Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield, players embark on a journey through the Galar region, where they’ll catch, battle and trade a variety of Pokemon, meet a memorable cast of characters and unravel the mystery behind the Legendary Pokemon Zacian and Zamazenta.
In the Wild Area, which stretches between the Galar region’s different towns and cities, players will explore a vast expanse of untamed wilderness that’s full of Pokemon to battle and catch. By teaming up with three other players locally or online in the new multiplayer co-op Max Raid Battles, players will face off against gigantic and super-strong Pokemon known as Dynamax Pokemon.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Looks like the boycott worked! =)
Well, there you go. People voted with their wallets and the National Dex is not an essential thing, which means we'll never see it in future games. Same goes for the reused models and animations - those will now be standard. Pretty sad.
Well not really we can't tell for sure yet. The worst selling game of a new gen still broke 15mil with most being around 16-17mil. Let's assume 15mil means the game meets expected sales. If they lost about 30% of their sales we wouldn't know until the sales slow down at around 10.5 million. Until we reach the slow down period we won't know for sure how effective the boycott campaign was which won't happen for about another 2 months.
A reminder not to mistake a vocal internet minority as representative of the average citizen, especially when it comes to gaming. (And politics)
I is almost like people have the choice and the right regardless of internet outrage to like what they want and spend their money on what they want to go figure.
Alright, so I'm pretty sure Sw/Sh isn't going to have it's review scores change all that much. The game is pretty much an 81/100 according to critics. Is it a disappointing game compared to previous entries? Kind of. Is it a bad game though, or an average game? NO! It's still a great game worth owning. And the sales reflect that.
Note that this actually doesn't mean much they were pretty much guaranteed to get high numbers since for a new gen they have never done worse than 15 million units over the lifetime even if the boycott movement reached 30% we wouldn't be able to tell until the sales reach between 10-15 million units since the majority of sales for a newly launched game are within the first month.
Just look at smash did 12.08 in the first month out of, of the time of this post, 15.7mil that is about 75% of its sales done within 1 month. If Sw/Sh cannot maintain their momentum for the year it will not break 15mil. If it can't break 12 mil within 1 month then they are in trouble(although they might get a boost when pokemon home comes out since they are some holding out because they want the home features first)
What's significant is that the new games appear to be doing better than the Let's Go games, showing that the purchasers are not (just) “dumb kids who’ll buy anything with a Pokémon logo”. Personally I bought the games despite knowing about the National Pokédex issue because ... I've never used the National Pokédex in my life.
If anything, I think that the if people find it a big deal that the national dex is missing it will show on the sales of the next pokemon game. I somwhat think that fewr pokemon is good for the game and many other things is steps in the right direction. Baby steps, 10 years behind steps. But still.
What's significant is that the new games appear to be doing better than the Let's Go games, showing that the purchasers are not (just) “dumb kids who’ll buy anything with a Pokémon logo”. Personally I bought the games despite knowing about the National Pokédex issue because ... I've never used the National Pokédex in my life.
Yu Suzuki can only dream of such a loyal fanbase...
Cool, so now this shows that it doesn't matter what state the next game is in, just as long as people get their Pokemon fix. Standards be damned.
How does the 6 million worldwide launch compare to the other mainline entries?
Second highest launch for a pokemon game behind sun and moon which had two days extra tracking and sold 7.2 million.
7.2 million is also aligned sales since Sun and Moon didn’t release the same week in foreign markets.
Plus, digital sales are on Switch surely higher than on 3DS...
http://www.vgchartz.com/article/251348/pokemon-xy-day-1-sales-set-3ds-record/
This article from 2013 says Black/White sold over 6.7 million its first week. And although it says X/Y only sold 5.5 million the first week, note that VGChartz didn't count digital sales back then.
Not to mention that "Dexit" was largely confined to the English speaking parts of the internet prior to launch. Looking at VGChartz data again, the vague "more than 2 million" figure for the USA isn't that high considering how Sun/Moon sold 3.7 million its first week in the USA and X/Y sold 4.06 million.
Game Freak Made Serious Bank
It is sad this sold 6 million with poor level design (houses, trees, fields, etc) poor animations, poor all, almost same gameplay and it sold better than death strading... amazing.
At least it is 100% a game and not a movie with gameplay elements with even higher scores just because of a cult following
