Pokémon Scarlet/Violet sold over 10m units WW in their first 3 days, including 4.05m from Japan
Pokémon is at its absolute peak, I never thought we'd see numbers this big again.
Just astounding sales numbers.
Pokemon easily. It'll end up over 460m by the end of this year.
Damn. I would’ve though that the Splat3 record would’ve held for a while.
Benji Said on Twitter that this is the biggest console exclusive launch ever. Can anyone verify this?
Benji Said on Twitter that this is the biggest console exclusive launch ever. Can anyone verify this?
He is spot on.
On the 1st party side, we know it is a record since Nintendo confirmed it, and we do know Sony's and MS records.
On the 3rd party side, nothing really compares since the biggest games are multiplats. GTA on PS2 would probably the biggest and while we didn't get a WW launch PR, it was not close to 10m given the other milestones we got.
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This may be more a management side issue. But the recent CEDEC earlier this year, Game Freak talked about modernizing and have moved to a more modern development process as of Arceus and Scarlet and Violet. This updated processes was what allowed them to work on Arceus and ScarVio at the same time, which they had never done 2 large scale internal projects at the same time before. Both games got 3 years of development.
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No it doesn't, the difference between 0 metacritic and 99 for this game would have been about 1 million sales at launch. The vast majority of these sales would have been preorders, then a lot of the post-launch sales will not have even seen the critic score or any reviews. Nintendo only gave a code to a small number of outlets and then set the embargo about as late as possible.
This massive record is all based on hype and marketing. If we want to see how aligned the general public is with the critic response, let's see how the legs are. We're already getting a bit of a sense, as the game is being slated on social media.
All good points. Something I've touched on here in passing is something we all have to be mindful when discussing the impact of overall population numbers in Japan or elsewhere. Notice how Nintendo marketing, while tailored to specific countries & continents always place an emphasis on families playing together (see the current Mario Kart 8 Deluxe adverts).
Anyone with a television is the audience for video game consoles, be it hybrid (Switch) or stationary (PS5/Xbox Series). The impact of changing demographics will eventually be felt but that effect can be mitigated by creating games for wider audiences as demonstrated by Nintendo on a consistent basis. The failure by the majority of platform holders & third parties to learn is entirely on them. Cultural bias in the workplace with regards to ageism is just as important to consider as sexism, racism, homophobia & transphobia, religious beliefs & political affiliation to recognise as hindering social progress & financial success. Games can appeal to anyone & everyone. This will become more pronounced as more generations come of age playing video games, continue to do so and/or share that interest with children. None of the above stops developers making games for specific audiences, if anything, diversifying may help as we can see with independent developers on Nintendo Switch eShop. Real challenge is feast or famine (rich getting richer as @Garlic put it) is for small, medium enterprises (SME).
The squeezed middle has yet to find the right balance of cult/mainstream works to find more consistent success on Switch as they did on SNES, PS1 & PS2. Digital margins help but unlike independents, its not enough - a physical retail presence is still required, as it enables 'happy accidents' whereby members of the general public stumble across the game in store, pick up the box & take a chance on something new. Problem is while hobbyists will either pay high prices or are savvy enough to seek out discounts, the unsuspecting customer will balk at the price tag, put the box down & move on. In other words, there is still a narrow window of opportunity that is being lost. Getting sidetracked, point being, Animal Crossing, Splatoon & Pokemon are not anomalies nor should the sales in Japan & globally be considered abnormal. How Nintendo does business is (relatively) normal, it's (most of) the rest of the industry that is behaving strangely. (edit: typos)
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Yep, reception wouldn't affect much launch sales but it should impact legs.
However, while the game's technical state is being criticized, there are a lot of positive comments about how great and ambitious the game is, in terms of scope and content notably.
So the question is whether the lack of polish will weight more for the audience buying the games after launch thanthe fact it's very fun game.
Given the mainstream audience those games target, I no longer believe the framerate/bugs will hinder legs notably. The audience bothered by those things is either not the franchise's target or the one that already bought the games in the first place.
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Well negative feedback online might cut the legs off this game unless they patch the crap out of it.
Pokemon problem will always will be time. And how ambitious they are. The fact that they are doing 2 big scales project which is Arceus and S/V at same time and released them at same point of time is crazy for company of their size.
I still believe that they should have just make a DLC for Arceus this year and launch S/V later next year even if it is early part of the year. But i guess. That holiday money alure is just too strong to ignore.
I still believe that they should have just make a DLC for Arceus this year and launch S/V later next year even if it is early part of the year. But i guess. That holiday money alure is just too strong to ignore.
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We're not "already getting a bit of sense", this game was already blasted in the social media starting well over a week before release, well in time for anyone with social media access to become aware of it. if anything, I feel the overall tone is actually more favorable than before the game released.
Dexit and Sw/Sh game WoM before DLC come out is like piss poor without much positive to talk off.
This one on the other hand got huge praise on the game ambition with big asterisk on the performance. S/V is going to have much much stronger leg by that fact alone as the base of the game is far stronger and well received over Sw/Sh.
The bugs may actually be a feature. The Streisand effect. A bit of galaxy brain 4D chess from Game Freak.
They can never just admit they were wrong and take the loss lol
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Absolutely, if anything like you've mentioned it seems the general reaction matches the critical reaction. Technically poor but still a fun game that lots of people are enjoying, which results in a pretty average score and on the low end for Pokémon.
I find it impossible to predict this at the moment, in the end it really depends what people are saying to their friends. Is it "yeah it's got some issues but I love it" or is it "the game is bad you should avoid it"?
Also worth thinking about the size of the launch when talking about legs. In a multiplier sense, legs could be much worse than Sw/Sh but total sales would still end up higher, given the launch is 1.7x the size.
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Crazy numbers, Pokemon is just on another level.
Social media may increase the game’s legs if anything
10 mln in debut week?!
Congrats. Well deserved!
Congrats. Well deserved!
Actually similar to Splatoon 3 the massive bump from one game to the other in Japan make the WW increase not that impressive. If Sw/Sh was 4M WW and 2M JP, then we're now at 6M WW, which is a nice bump but less insane. Of course the launch of Sh/Sh was already massive so any increase is good.
I'm still in shock....
I think a still need a
moment....
I think a still need a
moment....
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Just to visualize the shape of this:
(didn't make it like my other graphs because of mixed sources between Famitsu, Media Create and Nintendo + approximations for X/Y and Sun/Moon launch weeks to account for digital)
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I saw a tweet about that and I'm reminded that I need to go back and take a look at the presentation because that is extremely valuable information. It's nice that Game Freak is updating and modernizing their processes (again, they're seriously trying) but three years is not enough time to make an open-world game of this scale. Especially if it's your first and you had another team doing a different game.
They'll get better, but they definitely should invest the money into more manpower, at least, and better processes.
At the end of the day it passed QA testing and someone probably with a long job title said it was acceptable. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some crunch involved. It's probably the only Nintendo game not developed in the typical Nintendo way.
And to think Game Freak was hesitant to have their titles on the Switch. Nintendo's merging of console and handheld sensibilities, cultures, and markets arguably benefitted Pokemon the most out of Nintendo's franchises.
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No crunch involved, Game Freak has a good work culture, not on the same level as MonolithSoft, but certainly above the standard
Another thing to consider is the share of Japan at launch vs lifetime isn't even close.
SwSh launch 2mil Japan/ 4mil WW (ratio 33% japan)
SwSh LTD 6mil Japan / 19mil+ WW (ratio 23% japan)
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To put crudely, Japan is a shower, but WW is a grower.
Job listings are showing that it is, in fact, changing
SwSh/BDSP/Arceus are 3-day totals.
"Launch week" was always first tracked week aka week ending the Sunday after launch day.
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This is highly debatable at best. Unless you are talking about the enthusiast audience.
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I am skeptical. The very small self-reinforcing feedback loop of internet video game discussion (Era, Twitter, Reddit) has nothing to do with the vast, vast, vast majority of video game customers. Word of mouth matters a lot more. Current word of mouth that these two games are fun. The technical issues either don’t affect the fun, the player doesn’t care, or doesn’t notice them.
Most video game players play games, not tech specs, just like most music fans listen to music, not their ultra-expensive turntables, receivers, and speakers, or most movie fans watch movies rather than watch a 96” 8K TV with a 6 speaker surround sound set-up. Yes, there are movie and music fans who really get into the electronics used to play the software, but they are a tiny minority.
Just like video game fans.
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I can’t thank you enough for pointing out that internet graphics enthusiasts are a tiny, tiny slice of the broader video game market.
Yeah, delivering something like SV in 3 years including the pandemic and SwSh DLC is actually a big accomplishment.
What they're lacking is a bigger dev cycle for polishing and that probably could be achieved with what they already have, without reducing the 3-years between generations, by having Arceus team to make gen 10:
2023: SV DLC
2024: Outsourced remake
2025: Gen 10 by Arceus team (almost 4 years after Arceus)
2026: Gen 10 DLC
2027: Outsourced remake
2028: Gen 11 by SV team (5 years after the DLC, 6 after SV)
While 1 year of polishing would probably not sell so much more to justify the costs, gaming development keeps getting longer and they keep accumulating technical debts to meet deadlines, so they may eventually do something like the above.
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Didn't worked with SwSh dexit, won't do anything with SV besides spread the word about the games
Also, (potentially) DLC and VGC will make the games very evergreen as would be
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you're pretty much delusional at this point if you believe the bugs/performance will have any noticeable impact on the games sales going forward, only thing that'd be an actual hindrance would be another huge pokemon project releasing next year or a complete lack of post launch DLC which both seem unlikely.
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There’s a strong history of Pokemon benefiting from glitches - Missingno was a schoolyard legend and probably the most famous game glitch ever. It definitely helped reignite Poke-mania a few months after the U.S. release of Red and Blue and drive sales. It was almost like having a DLC release the way it added so much new content.
I’m not surprised that funny videos of meme-worthy, non-game-breaking glitches helped push sales even if the game was released in an inexcusable state.
It really is mindblowing. I know bigger install base can help support a series growth but this is the 5th Pokemon game on Switch. The open world and co-op really did crazy for this entry.
And yeah I believe all the viral videos of things like pokemon floating off into space, people falling through the world are actually attracting more than detracting from the experience. People find them funny and want to see it for themselves.
And yeah I believe all the viral videos of things like pokemon floating off into space, people falling through the world are actually attracting more than detracting from the experience. People find them funny and want to see it for themselves.
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Bigger Installbase resulting in bigger sales didnt really work for Pokemon to be honest.
On DS the more there were, the less Pokemon sold.
For all the praise HGSS got, it sold less than DP, even tho there were around 80m more DS out in the wild when HGSS got released.
Even if you argue Mainline releases, BW sold less than DP too, on an even larger installbase.
Same story on 3DS with X/Y vs SM, even considering the once in a lifetime boost of POGO.
Looking at the history of Pokemon as a whole, its been always the case that games releasing on larger installbases sell less. SV reversing that trend would be another record broken.
The seeing the bugs for themselves probably gonna result in dissapointment xd , since most of them come from being in online multiplayer, which requires having people to do that with.
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I don't normally readress comments like this but I guess my original comment could've been better. I never stated that everyone is slating or that it's a universal issue, it just is a fact that the game is getting negative posts about it on social media, with many of these getting hundreds of thousands of engagements. I haven't paid enough attention to see how widespread it is, and whether people are just memeing and don't feel that negative overall, but it's clear there's more negative sentiment than your usual game.
I'm going to do another thing I never do which is post an anecdote, one of my friends who I don't see as much but we always talk about Pokémon messaged me to ask if I did get the new game. I said yes and asked if he's got it and he said nah it looks awful. He's someone who spends a lot of time on social media so probably saw all the posts about bugs and bad graphics.
S/M interestingly sold more than X/Y outside of Japan.
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yes, i would attribute that to the POGO effect, but also just pokemon being at kinda a lowpoint back then in japan.
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Negative engagements has been the norm since pokemon fans discovered the internet and social media.
They never have any effect on sales.
Even the theory of "but it will hurt the sales of the next entry" never seems to actually happen.
BW not having any old mons till postgame didnt hurt XY, XY being thin on content didnt hurt SM, SM being easy and thin on content didnt hurt SWSH, and Dexit clearly didnt hurt SV.
Wrong thread ?