Pokemon Games by how many Units they sold




So I happened to stumble upon a video that shows off the Pokemon games by how much they sold, and I thought it might be an interesting video to share.


The top 4 selling titles, RB, GS, SwSh, and DP were the debut games for their generations, as well as the primary debut of the Pokemon games on a specific console, the latter reason probably being why DP sold so much, thanks to the Nintendo DS's huge success. Although in SwSh's case it is the second since LGPE came first.

Legend Arceus being barley above Crystal, is surprising, but being a standalone titles means less sales for what is more or less two identical games. Makes me wonder how much Pokemon games sell on their own when not counted together. Its still new, so there is probably going to be update, highly doubt it is going to be on the same level as SwSh.

Remakes sell less than the original games of the generation.

For a game that was only in the spotlight for two months, BDSP sold really well, beating HGSS. Thev holiday sales must have contributed to it.

Any other thoughts or observations?
 
Any other thoughts or observations?
There is one thought that can be given to any game released in last 3 years, and that's the sales being artificially boosted by Covid.

I do think Pokemon games are going to sell well regardless as they are carried by their brand and by the fact kids just love their fancy pettable pets, but the various quarantines definitely boosted the sales of the games all the way to Arceus (maybe excluded).

Honestly what I wish was possible to see was the age infographics. I don't think such data exists (how would you even get it anyway), but it'd really be interesting to see how the average age of who buys the games has evolved over releases.
 
Legend Arceus is SO low ? Of course, it's new so the numbers will still grow, but I don't understand why it's so low ! Bad timing ? (Just after Xmas AND BDSP ?)
 
Legend Arceus is SO low ? Of course, it's new so the numbers will still grow, but I don't understand why it's so low ! Bad timing ? (Just after Xmas AND BDSP ?)
Legends is basically its own game.

It doesn't follow the main theme of "collect cute creatures and pet them" (in fact the opposite, everything wants to kill you), so there's a good chance most if not all the buyers were actually adults or long term fans, and it's missing what's essentially the main chunk of pokemon buyers, kids.

(Also, it's the most recent game, and it doesnt have a double copy to carry it, 6.5 millions in barely 4 months is probably what i'd consider the opposite of low).
 

Yung Dramps

awesome gaming
Isn't the next Nintendo sales report supposed to come out fairly soon? If so OP made a really dumb decision doing this video before we can really get a fuller scope on BDSP/Legends sales
 
Isn't the next Nintendo sales report supposed to come out fairly soon? If so OP made a really dumb decision doing this video before we can really get a fuller scope on BDSP/Legends sales
No need to be harsh, geez. I had no idea that the next sales report was so supposed to come out soon.
 
The 13 million skyrocket on BDSP is still crazy to see like this.

I'm not even sure you can fully have the pandemic on this one, considering the (sigh) general state of how seriously people have taken it by the end of 2021. It was like people were just chomping at the bit for it, ridiculous. 13.97 million in the span of a single month

Isn't the next Nintendo sales report supposed to come out fairly soon? If so OP made a really dumb decision doing this video before we can really get a fuller scope on BDSP/Legends sales
Their entire channel is making charts like this, so I presume that he either knew about it and felt like it was still worth it to put it out before the next end of financial year report (the last one, the quarterly report for up to December 2021) or he didn't know and assumed the data out there was as relevant up to march as it was.

I mean the worst case scenario oh no he gets to put up another video for clicks.
 
Legends is basically its own game.

It doesn't follow the main theme of "collect cute creatures and pet them" (in fact the opposite, everything wants to kill you), so there's a good chance most if not all the buyers were actually adults or long term fans, and it's missing what's essentially the main chunk of pokemon buyers, kids.

(Also, it's the most recent game, and it doesnt have a double copy to carry it, 6.5 millions in barely 4 months is probably what i'd consider the opposite of low).
Here's the thing, I doubt that Pokemon's main consumers are children, despite it being targeted at children. There was an article that showed that early purchases of ORAS were people in their 20s; unfortunately the article was taken down so I cannot post a link. I also disagree on PLA lacking the theme of collecting; you are required to catch all the Pokémon in the Dex to beat the game.

I agree on the sales though, it just proves that being two of copies of what is the same game is hugely lucrative, and it seems most people buy it. I'm planning on writing a post on that model in the future.
 
There is little to no benefit received from mainline games with two entries. Estimates have typically put sales of both games somewhere in the 350K~ range LTD, though of course that depends on the core titles and how well they've sold in general. "Most people" are not buying both games, including those on a forum dedicated to Pokemon.
 
There is little to no benefit received from mainline games with two entries. Estimates have typically put sales of both games somewhere in the 350K~ range LTD, though of course that depends on the core titles and how well they've sold in general. "Most people" are not buying both games, including those on a forum dedicated to Pokemon.
You'd be surprised, but buying both is actually a moderately common thing, that's why double version sales exist.
Sure they don't make up the biggest chunk, but I'm quite confident a solid ~10% of the sales of either versions is from people who buy both (either for themselves or for their kids + them) rather than buying a single version and let everyone play it on their specific Nintendo account.
 
You'd be surprised, but buying both is actually a moderately common thing, that's why double version sales exist.
Sure they don't make up the biggest chunk, but I'm quite confident a solid ~10% of the sales of either versions is from people who buy both (either for themselves or for their kids + them) rather than buying a single version and let everyone play it on their specific Nintendo account.
No they don't. I am telling you this as a fact given that I have been following the VG sales industry for nearly a decade. Those dual-packs that you see before launch sell about 100K units in their first week and are maybe manufactured for the next quarter before they become dead inventory. The only people buying both versions are super fans and collectors, meaning the sales significantly fall off immediately after launch. The trend of buying both games has only gotten smaller given the ease of online play for version exclusives. PLA selling 6.5m units in a week, in January, only 2 months after the last mainline series game only further shows how insignificant a role 2 versions make in sales.

I cannot speak for multiple copies of the game being purchased via different Nintendo accounts in the same household, but my gut tells me that is an incredibly small minority, especially because I was under the impression you could bypass this via different profiles on Switch.
 

Theorymon

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You'd be surprised, but buying both is actually a moderately common thing, that's why double version sales exist.
Sure they don't make up the biggest chunk, but I'm quite confident a solid ~10% of the sales of either versions is from people who buy both (either for themselves or for their kids + them) rather than buying a single version and let everyone play it on their specific Nintendo account.
No they don't. I am telling you this as a fact given that I have been following the VG sales industry for nearly a decade. Those dual-packs that you see before launch sell about 100K units in their first week and are maybe manufactured for the next quarter before they become dead inventory. The only people buying both versions are super fans and collectors, meaning the sales significantly fall off immediately after launch. The trend of buying both games has only gotten smaller given the ease of online play for version exclusives. PLA selling 6.5m units in a week, in January, only 2 months after the last mainline series game only further shows how insignificant a role 2 versions make in sales.

I cannot speak for multiple copies of the game being purchased via different Nintendo accounts in the same household, but my gut tells me that is an incredibly small minority, especially because I was under the impression you could bypass this via different profiles on Switch.
So we do have some hard data for the dual pack in Japan at least.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/media-create-sales-cy-2019-2018-dec-31-2019-dec-29-new-used.284501/

So according to the Media Create Archive + some simple math, the dual pack accounted for about 18.5% of Japanese Sword and Shield sales in 2019. So basically 492,789

That may seem very impressive, but faint is correct about the dual packs not really getting much beyond the first print. Let's take a look at the total sales in 2020.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/media-create-sales-cy-2020-2019-dec-30-2021-jan-03-new-used.436718/

The dual pack only sold an additional 52,411 units, so I'm pretty sure that was the most of the copies they had.

This isn't a perfect comparison (also note that sadly, the 2021 whitepaper numbers from Media Create are missing, which does sorta suck since Famitsu doesn't even track dual pack sales), but let's take a look at where SwSh is at today using Famitsu's numbers. Note that again, Famitsu combines all the SwSh versions.

https://www.installbaseforum.com/forums/threads/media-create-sales-week-14-2022-apr-04-apr-10.709/

With those numbers in mind, the dual pack contributed to about 12.58% of SwSh sales as of 2022 in Japan.

Note that while numerically, you were pretty close Worldie, afaik the dual pack is also marketed towards families, and worldwide, we know that Pokemon Legends actually had a bigger debut than Sword and Shield.

My speculation is that this isn't directly tied to the whole two versions thing, but more that Sword and Shield, like most mainline Pokemon games, has a very heavy focus on the multiplayer component, which would make it more likely that parents are going to buy multiple copies of the game for their children and/or themselves. Two versions is more a side effect of that focus (it encourages trading), but I think it's likely difficult to truly determine just how many people are double dipping for themselves.

Pokemon is a traditionally very leggy franchise and I haven't actually kept up with how Legends is fairing compared to more traditional games, but its hard to denty that 6.5 million in a single month is nuts, so I can't help but think that something else is going on here!
 

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Legend Arceus is SO low ? Of course, it's new so the numbers will still grow, but I don't understand why it's so low ! Bad timing ? (Just after Xmas AND BDSP ?)
Interesting that we think of 6.5 million as "SO low" for these games, which proves how insanely well they sell. 6.5 million is more than what several Nintendo franchises have sold in total. It's roughly the same as Octopath Traveler, Xenoblades Chronicles 1 and 2, and Captain Toad put together. Or Pikmin 3, Arms, and Mario+Rabbids put together if you prefer another sample. Remember Fire Emblem: Three Houses? PLA sold twice as many copies as that, plus a million more. And while these other games have been out for years, the numbers for PLA are from the first week.

Or put another way: only four games for the Xbox One sold better than this (lifetime numbers, again). Or eight games for the PS4. It beats all the games on the PS5.

Pokémon games are simply bonkers lucrative. Many AAA games would be considered a roaring success with only half of its sales. Consider Detroit: Become Human for instance. Developed for four years to a tune of €30 million. 324 days of performance capture by 250 actors. It won a slew of awards and was nominated for tons more. It was the most successful game the studio has ever made. And it sold six million copies in a little over two years, PC and PS4 combined.

These games print money like absolutely crazy. Even the relative flops perform better than many widely acclaimed AAA games. BW2, for instance, is somehow seen as a bad seller (and I mean, it was released for the DS a year and a half after the 3DS was released, and XY was announced two months later - hardly the best timing for high sales), yet it has sold more copies than Ghost of Tsushima, which I can guarantee had a vastly higher budget and spent vastly longer in development.

I suspect PLA will reach the double-digit millions before long. That's way more than most games out there could ever hope for.
 

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Interesting that we think of 6.5 million as "SO low" for these games, which proves how insanely well they sell. 6.5 million is more than what several Nintendo franchises have sold in total. It's roughly the same as Octopath Traveler, Xenoblades Chronicles 1 and 2, and Captain Toad put together. Or Pikmin 3, Arms, and Mario+Rabbids put together if you prefer another sample. Remember Fire Emblem: Three Houses? PLA sold twice as many copies as that, plus a million more. And while these other games have been out for years, the numbers for PLA are from the first week.

Or put another way: only four games for the Xbox One sold better than this (lifetime numbers, again). Or eight games for the PS4. It beats all the games on the PS5.

Pokémon games are simply bonkers lucrative. Many AAA games would be considered a roaring success with only half of its sales. Consider Detroit: Become Human for instance. Developed for four years to a tune of €30 million. 324 days of performance capture by 250 actors. It won a slew of awards and was nominated for tons more. It was the most successful game the studio has ever made. And it sold six million copies in a little over two years, PC and PS4 combined.

These games print money like absolutely crazy. Even the relative flops perform better than many widely acclaimed AAA games. BW2, for instance, is somehow seen as a bad seller (and I mean, it was released for the DS a year and a half after the 3DS was released, and XY was announced two months later - hardly the best timing for high sales), yet it has sold more copies than Ghost of Tsushima, which I can guarantee had a vastly higher budget and spent vastly longer in development.

I suspect PLA will reach the double-digit millions before long. That's way more than most games out there could ever hope for.
Oh I won’t be surprised at all to see it well over 10 million in the quarterly report.
 
Interesting that we think of 6.5 million as "SO low" for these games, which proves how insanely well they sell. 6.5 million is more than what several Nintendo franchises have sold in total. It's roughly the same as Octopath Traveler, Xenoblades Chronicles 1 and 2, and Captain Toad put together. Or Pikmin 3, Arms, and Mario+Rabbids put together if you prefer another sample. Remember Fire Emblem: Three Houses? PLA sold twice as many copies as that, plus a million more. And while these other games have been out for years, the numbers for PLA are from the first week.

Or put another way: only four games for the Xbox One sold better than this (lifetime numbers, again). Or eight games for the PS4. It beats all the games on the PS5.

Pokémon games are simply bonkers lucrative. Many AAA games would be considered a roaring success with only half of its sales. Consider Detroit: Become Human for instance. Developed for four years to a tune of €30 million. 324 days of performance capture by 250 actors. It won a slew of awards and was nominated for tons more. It was the most successful game the studio has ever made. And it sold six million copies in a little over two years, PC and PS4 combined.

These games print money like absolutely crazy. Even the relative flops perform better than many widely acclaimed AAA games. BW2, for instance, is somehow seen as a bad seller (and I mean, it was released for the DS a year and a half after the 3DS was released, and XY was announced two months later - hardly the best timing for high sales), yet it has sold more copies than Ghost of Tsushima, which I can guarantee had a vastly higher budget and spent vastly longer in development.

I suspect PLA will reach the double-digit millions before long. That's way more than most games out there could ever hope for.
Of course Legends sell well, much better than other franchise, but relative to others AAA games from Pokemon, I expected better numbers !
 
Of course Legends sell well, much better than other franchise, but relative to others AAA games from Pokemon, I expected better numbers !
I'd wonder why you'd expect better numbers honestly.

The "genre" of Arceus is pretty unique and guaranteed to not be appealing to all the same people that play the main series (Expecially not the young kids as it's significantly harder and harsher, and lacks the usual "pet your pokemon and play with them").
And at same time, it's not different enough to warrant buying from non-fans, at least, not enough to explain a sizeable difference.

I was always of the opposite thought, that I would have been (positively) surprised if the game remotely matched the rest of the franchise.
 

bdt2002

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I was waiting for quite some time to address what I'm about to say, but as a die-hard fan of the Ranger trilogy on DS (specifically the third game, which just happened to sell the least), I can't not say this. By this point, we all know the main series games sell far more than almost every spinoff title ever released. If there's one thing that trilogy's taught me, it's that a "poor sales count" is absolutely not the reason games don't seem to get sequels anymore. In fact, here's a few statistics for you guys to chew on.

-Black & White 2 not only outsold both Emerald and Platinum (obviously not combined, but you get my point), but also made slightly more money than either game did with inflation taken into account (Source: https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/Pokémon#Main_series)
-Somehow, despite increasing DS game prices, it's recently gained back the pace to outsell Ultra Sun/Moon (9 million) as well
-Every set of core series remakes has sold at least 10 million copies between the paired versions
-The first main core series games on every Nintendo handheld (excluding Let's Go before SwSh) always end up as the best seilling core series game out of that system's list of options regardless of remakes, third versions, etc.

As an added bonus, some spin-off statistics for you to enjoy:

-Every Ranger trilogy game sold at least 1.5 million
-Every game in the "Rumble" series except the first sequel sold under 1 million
-The highest selling individual Pokémon game is the international version of Pokémon Stadium's first game (5.46 million)
-The combined sales of both versions of "Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red & Blue Rescue Team clock in at 5.85 million
-Out of every spin-off series of games, Mystery Dungeon's total sales clock in at around 16.84 million

Now remember when I said this. If there's one thing that trilogy's taught me, it's that a "poor sales count" is absolutely not the reason games don't seem to get sequels anymore. If that was the case, why is there so much inconsistency of which games actually go get sequels or not? There's definitely some evidence to suggest it's a factor, but the problem with this is that there are still some poorly selling games that did get sequels or remakes.
 
-Somehow, despite increasing DS game prices, it's recently gained back the pace to outsell Ultra Sun/Moon (9 million) as well
I think this is actually easy to explain: with the announcement of the discontinuation of 3ds shop, I've seen a lot of people go full panic mode acquiring older games for collectionism. This isn't specific to Pokemon (i've seen it toward other franchises) but would easily explain why some older games suddently had a bunch of sales in the last handful months.
 

bdt2002

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I think this is actually easy to explain: with the announcement of the discontinuation of 3ds shop, I've seen a lot of people go full panic mode acquiring older games for collectionism. This isn't specific to Pokemon (i've seen it toward other franchises) but would easily explain why some older games suddently had a bunch of sales in the last handful months.
I can definitely see this being the case, but for what it's worth B2W2 isn't one of those 3DS games that would be taken off the eShop simply because it wasn't ever there. Both of our statements are correct, I just figured I would clarify. :)
 

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