Pokémon Sword and Shield Sold 1.36 Million Retail Copies in Japan in 3 Days, Switch Sells 180,136 Units - Sales

by William D'Angelo , posted on 20 November 2019 / 5,766 Views

Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield sold 1,364,544 units at retail in its first three days of release in Japan, according to Famitsu for the week ending November 17. The figure includes physical game copies, download cards, and the Double Pack. It does not include digital figures.

The units sold is more than the 1.23 million units Super Smash Bros. Ultimate sold in its opening. It is now the biggest launch for a Nintendo Switch game in Japan.

Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield helped increase hardware sales of the Nintendo Switch to 180,136 units for the week. This figures is on par with what was sold during the launch week of Pokemon: Let’s Go, Piakchu! and Pokemon: Let’s Go, Eevee!. However, this is less than the 278,313 units sold during the launch week of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

The PlayStation 4 sold 8,094 units, the 3DS sold 1,262 units. The Xbox One sold 80 units and the PlayStation Vita sold 20 units.

Here is the complete top 10 chart:

[NSW] Pokemon Sword / Shield (Pokemon Co.) {2019.11.15} (¥5.980) - 1.364.544 / NEW
[PS4] Death Stranding (Sony Interactive Entertainment) {2019.11.08} (¥6.900) - 37.382 / 223.291 (-80%)
[NSW] Luigi's Mansion 3 (Nintendo) {2019.10.31} (¥5.980) - 29.718 / 235.047 (-46%)
[NSW] Ring Fit Adventure (Nintendo) {2019.10.18} (¥7.980) - 28.015 / 263.940 (-46%)
[PS4] Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (Electronic Arts) {2019.11.15} (¥7.727) - 26.761 / NEW
[PS4] Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (Sony Interactive Entertainment) {2019.10.25} (¥7.900) - 9.411 / 181.165 (-42%)
[NSW] Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games: Tokyo 2020 (Sega) {2019.11.01} (¥5.990) - 9.042 / 42.756 (-37%)
[PS4] Need for Speed: Heat (Electronic Arts) {2019.11.08} (¥7.727) - 7.638 / 23.944 (-53%)
[NSW] Minecraft (Microsoft Game Studios) {2018.06.21} (¥3.600) - 7.637 / 1.003.160 (-8%)
[PS4] Persona 5 Royal (Atlus) {2019.10.31} (¥8.800) - 7.195 / 228.756 (-64%)

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.

15 Comments

progstarmac (on 20 November 2019)

Monstruous sales!

Chicho (on 20 November 2019)

Minecraft is over a million in japan

curl-6 (on 20 November 2019)

Important to consider that not only does Famitsu not include digital, but it doesn't count Amazon or Nintendo's online store either

RaptorChrist (on 20 November 2019)

Double pack = 1 sale? I wonder the actual number sold separating the two and including digital. Maybe 2 million?

zorg1000 RaptorChrist (on 20 November 2019)

Double pack counts as two sales

Zenos (on 20 November 2019)

Despite all the issues Japan still bought this game without reservation. Pokemon is truly their COD.

Jumpin Zenos (on 20 November 2019)

I think a lot of the issues people are complaining about aren’t really issues. Most of the complaints I hear are that this one does not have every feature of all the past games, which is a bit of a ridiculous demand. It’s kind of like demanding all FF games have the material system and Espers, a sphere grid, junctioning, and Sephiroth.

Zenos Zenos (on 20 November 2019)

@Jumpin I disagree. When you buy a sequel you normally expect to have all the main features of the previous game. The national Dex is a pretty big exclusion. It's like a fighting game sequel having half the base roster of the previous game without any visual or mechanical upgrade to justify that, while all the existing fighters have the same animations as before. Rip-offs like this do exists unfortunately and I do think that this Pokemon game is much like that.

Gemmol31 Zenos (on 21 November 2019)

@zenos

This not the first game to miss all
The Pokémon so I agree with jumpin people are making a big deal out of this Pokémon game when there are past games that do Not have or carry all the Pokémon. The animation not a huge deal either. I honestly could not find anything that was a huge deal all minor issues

-2

StriderKiwi (on 20 November 2019)

Wonder how the US and world sales will look after the holiday, digital included.

siebensus4 (on 20 November 2019)

More software sales as Smash and 35 % less hardware sold than during Smash launch, despite Switch Lite. That's not a good sign for the next weeks... Seems like we already have a saturated hardware market in Japan.