Pokemon Legends: Z-A Sold 5.8 Million Units in First Week - Sales
by William D'Angelo , posted on 24 October 2025 / 6,780 Views
The Pokemon Company announced Pokémon Legends: Z-A sold over 5.8 million units worldwide in its first week. Nearly half of these sales were played on the Nintendo Switch 2.
This would make it the fifth biggest opening in franchise history. The entries to have a bigger launch were Pokémon Scarlet / Violet with 10 million units sold in 3 days, Pokémon Legends: Arceus with 6.5 million units sold in 3 days, Pokémon Sword / Shield with 6 million units sold in 3 days, and Pokémon Brilliant Diamond / Shining Pearl with 6 million units sold in 3 days.
Pokémon Legends: Z-A launched for the Nintendo Switch 2 and Nintendo Switch on October 16.
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 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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These games seem like sports games. Quality isn't that important, people will fork over cash regardless.
And that's exactly why GF/Pokemon/Nintendo cant be held to any kind of quality standards...
After playing 10 hours of a borrowed copy, This is the first main Pokémon game I've decided not to buy
I think ZA would have been great as a full "mainline" game with its focus on battling
But I personally find it terrible as a follow up to PLA
I ended up returning Scarlett/Violet on release day because of how much of a shit show it was.
It was actually the first game in over a decade I had ever got a refund for.
This I wasn't even contemplating on buying because the trailers were terrible.
...But it's also sad that these games are still selling millions and millions of units with a garbage game engine, tired mechanics and a copy-paste formula... Which is why they never improve release-to-release.
Yup... S/V was the first Pokémon game I ever truly regretting buying
ZA is the first I skipped on buying for myself
Played a friends copy for a few hours and decided not to continue.
Okay so get Nintendo out of this tho... they having been making half the best games in the last gen
PLA wasn't all that great either
It still sold like hotcakes, all the boycotts are a joke.
won't be buying either, wishing for a sharp drop the next few weeks, for the sake of quality
I'm not buying this one.
Pokemon boycotts fail everytime. Sure its less than most of the other Switch games in the franchise but even so that's a lot of units sold
People buying garbage will end up buying garbage again coz that's what ninty, the pokemon company, and game freak be producing ever since swsh
The Nintendo switch era of Pokemon is beyond disappointing...
This is pathetic!
close to 3 million on a system thats 4 months old is crazy
Didn't older titles do like 10m+ in first weeks?
Only Scarlet and Violet did 10m+. Z to A is the second lowest selling of the Switch Pokemon games. 5.8m first week is better than Let's Go (over 3m first week), but below BD/SP (6m first week), Sword/Shield (6m first weekend), and Legends Arceus (6.5m first week). So Z to A is down 700k compared to it's immediate predecessor in the Legends sub-series, Legends Arceus, in spite of releasing to a larger install base of 160m combined Switch 1 and Switch 2 units. It's a drop, but probably not enough of one to make Nintendo and Pokemon Company take the series more seriously by getting Gamefreak more development assistance and a higher budget to work with.
