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Pokémon Scarlet/Violet sold over 10m units WW in their first 3 days, including 4.05m from Japan

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 ?
Whoops
 
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 ?
Very true, Pokémon fans always seem to be upset and complaints seem to dominate most of the time. I guess the most recent game (Arceus) being quite different to this makes it look worse. As far as I recall, everyone was loving Arceus and all the QoL improvements especially.
 
I follow quite a few Pokemon content creators and they are all singing the praises of this game, even if they acknowledge its technical shortcomings.

If you think the performance is actually going to hurt this game you do not understand Pokemon's target audience.
 
Very true, Pokémon fans always seem to be upset and complaints seem to dominate most of the time. I guess the most recent game (Arceus) being quite different to this makes it look worse. As far as I recall, everyone was loving Arceus and all the QoL improvements especially.
SV kept most of the QoL at least, and added some of its own
 
SV kept most of the QoL at least, and added some of its own
It kept some of it, but not the most important bits. It feels incredibly archaic and slow to play, which is especially bad in a massive open world.
 
Oh wow. That is quite insane. What a year GameFreak has. Arceus was already a huge success and now this.
 
It kept some of it, but not the most important bits. It feels incredibly archaic and slow to play, which is especially bad in a massive open world.
Don't want to derail the thread, but I don't really understand this comment at all. If there's any one thing I find to be quite appealing about S/V is just how snappy it feels to play for a Pokemon game. Everything functions considerably faster than ever before. Pokemon games have always been plagued with a languid pace due to various factors and many if not all of those have been improved here.
 
Don't want to derail the thread, but I don't really understand this comment at all. If there's any one thing I find to be quite appealing about S/V is just how snappy it feels to play for a Pokemon game. Everything functions considerably faster than ever before. Pokemon games have always been plagued with a languid pace due to various factors and many if not all of those have been improved here.

I get what he means with playing legends arceus, SV does feel slow especially transition to battles compare to PLA. Also the catching I would bullet through PLA compare to SV. That said SV did do alot of things great and in the right direction, but there are still a few things from PLA they kept. More specifically mechanics around battles
 
Don't want to derail the thread, but I don't really understand this comment at all. If there's any one thing I find to be quite appealing about S/V is just how snappy it feels to play for a Pokemon game. Everything functions considerably faster than ever before. Pokemon games have always been plagued with a languid pace due to various factors and many if not all of those have been improved here.
Well compare it to any other game and it still feels dreadfully slow. The problem for me with Pokemon is its constantly just compared to itself, and its about a decade behind the rest of the high budget AAA industry at this point. Its slow to load into a pokemon battle, slow to play out the moves, still doing the text descriptions of what we can obviously see (e.g. "it hit 4 times!" or "pokemon was poisoned ..... pokemon was hurt from poison...") the game hitches and takes a while to load sometimes, e.g. when sending out a different pokemon. Catching a pokemon takes like a full minute which feels especially slow after Arceus.

I'm sure if you compared this to older games it would be improved, but its not a favourable comparison this being the game after Arceus.

I think turn-based games just don't suit open worlds in general tbh, and pokemon is the slowest of them all.

Edit: given I don't wanna derail the thread I'll just add to the same post here, I'm really liking this game, its definitely a big step up from Sword, with QoL being one of those step ups. Its just vs other big budget games and vs the last Pokemon game it still feels awful and slow to play at times, which is the most important thing to me as a relatively impatient person.
 
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About franchise sales
Pokémon since 1996 - 450 million copies sold
Mario since 1983 - nearly 800 million copies sold
Call of Duty since 2003 - 435 million copies sold (multiplataform)
 
It doesnt matter what other games are doing if your target audience doesnt really play other games.

Some franchises are so successful that they become cultural, if your friends and everyone at school are playing pokemon then you’re playing pokemon, you might not even like video games but you’re playing it. Nobody is telling their friends “im not playing the game you all play because of frame drops”.
 
Well compare it to any other game and it still feels dreadfully slow. The problem for me with Pokemon is its constantly just compared to itself, and its about a decade behind the rest of the high budget AAA industry at this point. Its slow to load into a pokemon battle, slow to play out the moves, still doing the text descriptions of what we can obviously see (e.g. "it hit 4 times!" or "pokemon was poisoned ..... pokemon was hurt from poison...") the game hitches and takes a while to load sometimes, e.g. when sending out a different pokemon. Catching a pokemon takes like a full minute which feels especially slow after Arceus.

I'm sure if you compared this to older games it would be improved, but its not a favourable comparison this being the game after Arceus.

I think turn-based games just don't suit open worlds in general tbh, and pokemon is the slowest of them all.

Edit: given I don't wanna derail the thread I'll just add to the same post here, I'm really liking this game, its definitely a big step up from Sword, with QoL being one of those step ups. Its just vs other big budget games and vs the last Pokemon game it still feels awful and slow to play at times, which is the most important thing to me as a relatively impatient person.
I don't disagree with most of this, but I think comparing Pokemon to non-Pokemon games is largely pointless. Pokemon is its own thing with its own kind of appeal.
 
Amazing numbers! WoM in my bubble is also great.

Now that I've beaten the game and almost completed my living Dex I started playing the 4 previous games for a few minutes each to compare them.
In my opinion the series is evolving in the right direction and I'm looking forward to how Gen 10 will perform.
After 70ish hours in the single player I only encountered a few minor bugs but the poor performance stayed throughout the game (and even got worse in some places or with certain weather conditions).
This is not the place to discuss the games features but overall there are many QoL improvements and movement in the world felt great so I would recommend the games to friends (with a performance warning).
Hopefully GF will release one or two patches before the year ends.

Not every part of the game is improved though and overall I still think PLA is the better game and should have gotten a big expansion (or a delayed release this holiday).
5. LGPE
4. BDSP
3. SwSh
2. SV
1. PLA
Well compare it to any other game and it still feels dreadfully slow. The problem for me with Pokemon is its constantly just compared to itself, and its about a decade behind the rest of the high budget AAA industry at this point. Its slow to load into a pokemon battle, slow to play out the moves, still doing the text descriptions of what we can obviously see (e.g. "it hit 4 times!" or "pokemon was poisoned ..... pokemon was hurt from poison...") the game hitches and takes a while to load sometimes, e.g. when sending out a different pokemon. Catching a pokemon takes like a full minute which feels especially slow after Arceus.

I'm sure if you compared this to older games it would be improved, but its not a favourable comparison this being the game after Arceus.
I mostly agree with this comment. Even if they fixed all of the performance issues and bugs the battles in this game are too slow.

Entering and exiting a battle takes a long time (even more if you catch the wild Pokémon), the camera does weird stuff so I had to spent time to get to the normal battle screen and most important: There is too much text in every round.
What the game lists for every attack/round should be part of a "battle log" you can open if you're confused about what just happened.
Many event/effect texts ("defence lowered", "hit 4 times", "took damage from the poison") could be replaced by short animations and small icons which would improve the pacing of each battle.
 
Just to visualize the shape of this:
0rt8UKS.png


(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)
6m is a given no matter how good or bad the legs will be.
Can it reach Gold/Silver or even the original Pokémon though. I place my bet on surpassing Gold/Silver, but not Red/Blue


Digital sales might not be updated. So we might never find out.
 
I get what he means with playing legends arceus, SV does feel slow especially transition to battles compare to PLA. Also the catching I would bullet through PLA compare to SV. That said SV did do alot of things great and in the right direction, but there are still a few things from PLA they kept. More specifically mechanics around battles
I love PLA so you won't get any argument from me 😂 . I think that game was a real breath of fresh air in a lot of ways, but it seems clear that it was a bit of an experiment with evolving the series. Some things from there were adopted by S/V and others weren't, but certainly I hope they continue making more games like Arceus to help provide a "Pokemon-like experience" while also being something not quite the same. Ultimately more of those ideas may hopefully be adopted by future main line titles when they work well.
 
Very true, Pokémon fans always seem to be upset and complaints seem to dominate most of the time. I guess the most recent game (Arceus) being quite different to this makes it look worse. As far as I recall, everyone was loving Arceus and all the QoL improvements especially.
People had plenty to complain about arceus too.
From it having a total of 7 trainer battles, to the small dex, to the generaly muted colours.

On the plus side, the pokemon cycle means its time for nostalgia to let people see that Pokemon XY was actually a great generation xd.
 
Yeah I saw loads of complaints about Arceus around when it came out. Yes many people loved it (including myself), but certainly a great many people did not. Setting aside the issues people had with the graphics and performance (there were many), I've seen just as many people say it's too different from what they want in a Pokemon game as people who said it wasn't different enough!

Pokemon is so huge that the "vocal minority" for this series is bigger than the majority of players for most other games. Obviously that makes the complaints stand out more than they do for a lot of other things.
 
People had plenty to complain about arceus too.
From it having a total of 7 trainer battles, to the small dex, to the generaly muted colours.

On the plus side, the pokemon cycle means its time for nostalgia to let people see that Pokemon XY was actually a great generation xd.
Yes kids who grow with X/Y are already saying is actually great, with the game came out people online we're hating the Game alot
 
6m is a given no matter how good or bad the legs will be.
Can it reach Gold/Silver or even the original Pokémon though. I place my bet on surpassing Gold/Silver, but not Red/Blue


Digital sales might not be updated. So we might never find out.

A 4mil launch means this game will easily surpass 7mil, it can definitely surpass red/blue. Hell there is a chance it can beat GS (7.17mil) and get close to RB (8.22mil) in these next 7 weeks

Edit: game did 4mil FW sell thru fw, SwSh did 2mil FW. Think 6mil the bare minimum for this quarter alone
 
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A 4mil launch means this game will easily surpass 7mil, it can definitely surpass red/blue. Hell there is a chance it can beat GS (7.17mil) and get close to RB (8.22mil) in these next 7 weeks

Edit: game did 4mil FW sell thru fw, SwSh did 2mil FW. Think 6mil the bare minimum for this quarter alone
I just refuse to accept any sequel could beat the phenomenon original Pokémon.
That we're talking about it as a mere possibility is already a huge testimony for this installment.
 
Unless the technical issues impact legs to a significant degree, we are looking at a 20M+ launch quarter shipment.

DLC announcement early next year should ensure sustained sales in 2023, even if Nintendo starts talking about future hardware/Switch 2/Drake.
 
Unless the technical issues impact legs to a significant degree, we are looking at a 20M+ launch quarter shipment.

DLC announcement early next year should ensure sustained sales in 2023, even if Nintendo starts talking about future hardware/Switch 2/Drake.
I hope they add more multiplayer stuff. that could push the health of the games out longer
 
I have some basic statistics about the success of this franchise on the Switch that I hope people find informative! I think it's the ultimate testament to how crazy the performance has been, particularly in the last 12 months:

  • Pokemon has sold 85.18 million units on the Switch (premium software only)
  • Mainline Pokemon has sold 79.01 million units on the Switch
  • 41.48 million units were sold within the last 12-months
  • 40.78 million units of mainline games were sold within the last 12-months
  • 39.33 million units of mainline games were sold counting only new releases (as in, games released in the last 12 months)
 
I just refuse to accept any sequel could beat the phenomenon original Pokémon.
That we're talking about it as a mere possibility is already a huge testimony for this installment.

That's fine, opinion and all, but let me give you some context of how big this launch was. 4.05mil would mean roughly a 4.5mil maybe ship+digital? Already over halfway there within first 3 days 😉
 
Ehh. I have seen many praising XY online as one of the best Pokemon online system that many wish it return lol. So yeah. The cycle begins lol.
XY online was the best online the series had had, and should return

XY is still trash

(it's not trash, but it is an underwhelming set of games, and you can acknowledge that while still recognizing the things it was good at. in fact, I would hope for that to be the case, rather than committing wholly to "no this was totally bad with no redeeming qualities" or "no this was perfect with nothing wrong")
 
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XY online was the best online the series had had, and should return

XY is still trash

(it's not trash, but it is an underwhelming set of games, and you can acknowledge that while still recognizing the things it was good at. in fact, I would hope for that to be the case, rather than committing wholly to "no this was totally bad with no redeeming qualities" or "no this was perfect with nothing wrong")

XY main storyline indeed is one of the weakest one. But i just love the online portion so much. It is like best of the best that it makes me put 300-400 hours for online competitive that era lol.
 
XY main storyline indeed is one of the weakest one. But i just love the online portion so much. It is like best of the best that it makes me put 300-400 hours for online competitive that era lol.
Online was excellent, and the QoL and feature enhancements it made were so great they became mainstays of the series - Amie, de-abstracting EV training, player customization.

They were definitely games with a lot of merits.
 
6m is a given no matter how good or bad the legs will be.
Can it reach Gold/Silver or even the original Pokémon though. I place my bet on surpassing Gold/Silver, but not Red/Blue


Digital sales might not be updated. So we might never find out.
I wouldn't worry about that, I doubt Nintendo wants to stop providing sales data and they update their domestic million-sellers shipments every year in the CESA White Paper so we should get updates until the Switch eShop goes down (if it ever does). In any case it shouldn't take long for S/V to reach at least the first milestone so we'll find out soon in a quarterly earnings release
 
XY main storyline indeed is one of the weakest one. But i just love the online portion so much. It is like best of the best that it makes me put 300-400 hours for online competitive that era lol.

Who plays Pokemon for the story? Seriously, I played the original games and D/P and XY were easily my favorite pair. My only complaint was that the final boss was a letdown compared to the mud-stomping the final boss in D/P gave me.

But this is off-topic, but I still find it odd that people are still butt-hurt over XY.
 
Who plays Pokemon for the story? Seriously, I played the original games and D/P and XY were easily my favorite pair. My only complaint was that the final boss was a letdown compared to the mud-stomping the final boss in D/P gave me.

But this is off-topic, but I still find it odd that people are still butt-hurt over XY.

It is not only story is big problem of XY though. The game itself failed to fulfill its potential on many ground.

Team Flare is just... not interesting team to face. Outside Lissandre himself which lack in his team composition leading to such easy fight. Zygarde is just... there. Not much build up. Just being there.

The Champions and Elite Four is also not much challenge to fight there.

Also, not to forget that XY had less new Pokemon in that generation vs previous ones which lead to more leaning of Gen 1 and previous generation pokemon to fill the spots.

That's for me is the most common XY weakness that GF sadly never went to make 3rd version to clean it up.
 
Ehh. I have seen many praising XY online as one of the best Pokemon online system that many wish it return lol. So yeah. The cycle begins lol.
It's always a cycle, as new Pokemon players get into the game through different generations. I was a Gen 4 kid, but I also have a lot of nostalgia for Gen 5.

Gen 5 was hated at launch and now it's regarded as one of if not THE best generation of Pokemon. And now we're starting to see some love for Gen 6. Soon we'll see it for Gen 7, and within a decade, yes, even Gen 8 will be looked back upon fondly. I even saw a post on Twitter a couple of days ago that asked for some appreciation for Gen 8 in the wake of Scarlet and Violet being so buggy. It's going to happen.
 
It's always a cycle, as new Pokemon players get into the game through different generations. I was a Gen 4 kid, but I also have a lot of nostalgia for Gen 5.

Gen 5 was hated at launch and now it's regarded as one of if not THE best generation of Pokemon. And now we're starting to see some love for Gen 6. Soon we'll see it for Gen 7, and within a decade, yes, even Gen 8 will be looked back upon fondly. I even saw a post on Twitter a couple of days ago that asked for some appreciation for Gen 8 in the wake of Scarlet and Violet being so buggy. It's going to happen.
All mainline Pokémon games are great. If they weren't the franchise wouldn't keep being so popular.
 
I have some basic statistics about the success of this franchise on the Switch that I hope people find informative! I think it's the ultimate testament to how crazy the performance has been, particularly in the last 12 months:

  • Pokemon has sold 85.18 million units on the Switch (premium software only)
  • Mainline Pokemon has sold 79.01 million units on the Switch
  • 41.48 million units were sold within the last 12-months
  • 40.78 million units of mainline games were sold within the last 12-months
  • 39.33 million units of mainline games were sold counting only new releases (as in, games released in the last 12 months)
This is freaking insane...

I wonder how much blood will be spilt once we get a comprehensive view of the 2022 sales of this franchise in February. The final tally for the year might surpass 50M.
 
This is freaking insane...

I wonder how much blood will be spilt once we get a comprehensive view of the 2022 sales of this franchise in February. The final tally for the year might surpass 50M.
That number is including the 14 mi BDSP sold in 2021, which wouldn't be counted in the CY2022 tally. For it to surpass 50 mi, it would need around 35 mi combined for this quarter alone.
 
Sword and Shield received a lot of criticism before the launch (animation and most importantly the national Dex "problem"). Now the G8 is the second best sales of the franchise. So in my opinion, I doubt theses technical issues will have a repercussion on the legs of SV.
 
I have some basic statistics about the success of this franchise on the Switch that I hope people find informative! I think it's the ultimate testament to how crazy the performance has been, particularly in the last 12 months:

  • Pokemon has sold 85.18 million units on the Switch (premium software only)
  • Mainline Pokemon has sold 79.01 million units on the Switch
  • 41.48 million units were sold within the last 12-months
  • 40.78 million units of mainline games were sold within the last 12-months
  • 39.33 million units of mainline games were sold counting only new releases (as in, games released in the last 12 months)
Just noticed that you made a mistake there with that number. It's 38.83M. 14.92M for BDSP, 13.91M for PLA and 10M for SV.
 
It is not only story is big problem of XY though. The game itself failed to fulfill its potential on many ground.

Team Flare is just... not interesting team to face. Outside Lissandre himself which lack in his team composition leading to such easy fight. Zygarde is just... there. Not much build up. Just being there.

The Champions and Elite Four is also not much challenge to fight there.

Also, not to forget that XY had less new Pokemon in that generation vs previous ones which lead to more leaning of Gen 1 and previous generation pokemon to fill the spots.

That's for me is the most common XY weakness that GF sadly never went to make 3rd version to clean it up.

My final post on this subject.

The less new Pokemon and more learning on Gen 1 was a mix of the game being the first mainline 3D Pokemon game along with team responding to people who hated B/W for being almost nothing but new Pokemon.

And I personally liked Team Flare, just wished they did more with them and the Champion and Elite Four were decent challenges, just not as much as previous games. But by XY, GameFreaks had changed their focused to online and less on making the single-player challenging.
 
Pokemon easily. It'll end up over 460m by the end of this year.
To be fair, Pokemon added 60 million in the last FY, even though the main games only recorded about 30m in sales during that FY, so there's definitely stuff (like perhaps mobile purchases) that are being included in some cases. Ultimately, it's entirely possible for it to be higher than 460 by the end of this year and possibly reach 500 by the end of the FY.
 
To be fair, Pokemon added 60 million in the last FY, even though the main games only recorded about 30m in sales during that FY, so there's definitely stuff (like perhaps mobile purchases) that are being included in some cases. Ultimately, it's entirely possible for it to be higher than 460 by the end of this year and possibly reach 500 by the end of the FY.
Maybe Virtual Console sales too.
On the Wii, WiiU and 3DS.
 
I'd imagine that is definitely a factor, but since we know the regular games did about 30m, I can't see VC making up the other 30m.
Maybe they didn't update the VC sales in a long time or at all and added them to the total all together.
 
I follow quite a few Pokemon content creators and they are all singing the praises of this game, even if they acknowledge its technical shortcomings.

If you think the performance is actually going to hurt this game you do not understand Pokemon's target audience.

I'm glad it's not just me. I don't really mind the technical issues with the game, since the game is still playable. It's not like the game is preventing you from progressing due to those issues.
 
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