The place there’s cute and lovable Pokémon, there’s at all times a manner. Regardless of less-than-stellar critiques and tons of efficiency hitches and bugs, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet simply broke gross sales information on the Nintendo Swap and past, shifting 10 million copies of their opening weekend alone.
“That is the very best quantity ever for international and home gross sales within the first three days after the discharge of software program for all Nintendo sport consoles, together with Nintendo Swap,” the Mario maker revealed in a press launch late Wednesday. Roughly 4 million gross sales occurred simply in Japan, whereas the opposite 6 million got here from overseas.
To place that quantity in perspective, the final mainline entries within the sequence, Pokémon Sword and Defend, solely offered 2 million copies of their first two days. They’re presently the fifth best-promoting sport ever on the Swap, suggesting Scarlet and Violet is on monitor to surpass them, and probably even ultimately unseat Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
Whereas a part of Scarlet and Violet’s record-breaking success little doubt has to do with what number of extra Switches Nintendo has offered within the three years since Sword and Defend, the truth that they’re now the fastest-promoting video games ever launched on a Nintendo platform, together with the Wii and DS, provides an entire different spectacular wrinkle to the milestone.
And it additionally reveals that the video games’ objectively tough efficiency, and the glitches going viral on social media, haven’t appeared to harm the gross sales pitch for them one bit. Followers are nonetheless taking part in the hell out of those video games regardless of the at-occasions Cyberpunk 2077 ranges of bugs and efficiency points. There had been hypothesis, and positively hope on the a part of some longtime gamers, that the extensively criticized points with Scarlet and Violet, which launched inside a 12 months of each the Sensible Diamond/Shining Pearl remakes and Pokémon Legends: Arceus, may push GameFreak to take its foot off the fuel and permit extra time in-between releases.
That appears more and more unlikely.
