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Pokemon Legends: Arceus in the UK Had the 4th Biggest Pokemon Launch Ever

Pokemon Legends: Arceus in the UK Had the 4th Biggest Pokemon Launch Ever - Sales

by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 February 2022 / 2,646 Views

The Pokemon Company and developer Game Freak released Pokémon Legends: Arceus last Friday, January 28 for the Nintendo Switch.

Pokémon Legends: Arceus had a successful launch in the UK with the fourth biggest Pokémon launch of all time at retail, according to the head of GamesIndustry Christopher Dring via Twitter. Pokémon Sun and Moon, Pokémon Sword and Shield, and Pokémon Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby are the three Pokémon games with bigger launches.

The game is also the fastest-selling entry in the series with just a single version, beating the previous record set by 2000's Pokémon Yellow. It also accounted for nearly 50 percent of all retail sales in the UK last week.

Here are the top 10 biggest Pokémon launches in the UK at retail, according to GfK data:

  1. Sun and Moon
  2. Sword and Shield
  3. Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby
  4. Legends: Arceus
  5. Black and White
  6. Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl
  7. X and Y
  8. Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee
  9. Yellow
  10. Heart Gold and Soul Silver

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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26 Comments
Kneetos (on 30 January 2022)

Enjoying the heck out of this game
Glad I changed my mind and decided to give it a try

  • +7
Yassgragra Kneetos (on 30 January 2022)

How do you rate it against sword/shield?

  • +1
SecondWar Yassgragra (on 31 January 2022)

Personally I find it more engaging due to changes to the gameplay formula. It takes a little while to get going but I’m now find I have I’m pushing on to explore the game-world more rather than just going through the motion in SwSh.
And whilst I wouldn’t compare it to Dark Souls, it’s definitely more challenging than SwSh.

  • +1
Kneetos Yassgragra (on 31 January 2022)

This game is kind of what I wanted those games to be
In fact, if legends was the gen 8 of pokemon, if each area had a town, with a gym for pokemon battles and maybe contests, as well as what legends arceus does so far it would be amazing imo

I would be happy with a "choose your story" pokemon game, could be a pokemon champion, a researcher or contest superstar

  • +1
JWeinCom (on 30 January 2022)

Not bad especially considering there is no double dipping with this one.

  • +4
Otter (on 31 January 2022)

Considering this doesn't factor in digital and it just came out right after D/P (imagine being 10 years old an asking for your second pokemon game in 2months), this is an amazing result. Sure the game isn't as technically brilliant as BOTW but its still gamefreaks most ambitious (and true to anime) Pokemon title, It should reinforce this as a direction for the series to take.

  • +3
holzi (on 31 January 2022)

With digital this might be the largest Pokemon launch ever. Digital is really big in the UK. Do we know how much more Sun/Moon did sell?

  • +3
xMetroid (on 30 January 2022)

Digital data is growing so i'm assuming it could maybe be top 3 with eshop sales.

  • +2
Zeruda-Hime (on 31 January 2022)

I really like this game. When the first sales??

  • 0
kazuyamishima (on 31 January 2022)

Interesting, no mention on the hardware bump so probably wasn’t too noticeable.

  • 0
ironmanDX kazuyamishima (on 31 January 2022)

It's Pokemon.

It'll be noticeable.

  • 0
Kakadu18 (on 30 January 2022)

Impressive considering it launched in January.
Apparently this chart counts the double packs only as one copy. If BDSP double pack is counted as two, it outsold Arceus by just 150 copies.
I got this from Installbase.

  • 0
2zosteven (on 30 January 2022)

so many switches out there

  • 0
LivncA_Dis3 (on 31 January 2022)

Such a shame,

Maybe covid slowed the numbers down or people were really just skeptical with the new gameplay mechanics and we're not having any of it

  • -6
Slownenberg (on 30 January 2022)

Well deserved. This is the game Sw/Sh should have been. Replaces the stale 20+ year old formula with a vision for the future of pokemon.

  • -8
JWeinCom Slownenberg (on 30 January 2022)

Or, they could just release both. So, the people who like the formula can keep enjoying it, and others can play something different.

  • +5
xMetroid JWeinCom (on 30 January 2022)

To me i would rather have the classic BDSP style but better and Legend's to coexist. I feel like Sw/Sh is a mixt of both but has the qualities of none. The classic areas were short as hell and easy and the open area felt like a draft.

  • 0
Slownenberg JWeinCom (on 31 January 2022)

Seems everyone is pretty happy from the switch from the old stale formula to the Legends formula. Sw/Sh was clearly starting to go in this direction with the wild areas, which was the coolest part of that game, so it makes sense they would continue that transition as they did here. Sw/Sh sold very well because it was the first high end pokemon main series game, but it is pretty clear people were getting tired of the stale same old 20+ year old formula, hence the collective sigh of relief by basically everyone with this game (finally something new in pokemon!). If you want to play the old formula you've got Sw/Sh and D/P remake and probably future remakes as well. But this is clearly where the series was starting to head with Sw/Sh and now they made that into a full game and it has brought life back to pokemon. Just as BotW is clearly the formula Zelda games will take for now on, and you can also play older Zeldas if you prefer the old formula, same with Pokemon now.

  • 0
Manlytears Slownenberg (on 31 January 2022)
  • -12