Pokémon has always been a big seller, but the first sales figures for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are absolutely bonkers. Nintendo Japan shared an official press release revealing that the latest entries in the Pokémon series sold ten million units globally within just three days. This is the biggest Nintendo game debut in history for any Nintendo platform, and could potentially be the biggest launch of any first party title from any gaming platform.
A whopping 4.05 million of these sales were in Japan, which smashes the previous fastest selling game record set just two months earlier with Splatoon 3. It goes without saying that the last few months have been huge for Nintendo, especially domestically in Japan. Tomorrow we will have the Famitsu sales charts, where we can see if the huge Pokémon sales numbers also resulted in a surge of Nintendo Switch hardware sales, so be sure to come back to GameLuster on Thursday for that.
The monumental success of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet is not without its detractors. Whilst they are now the fastest selling Nintendo games of all time, they are also the most unpolished and technologically problematic Nintendo game releases in recent memory. Social media has been flooded with images, videos and memes highlighting just how poorly the game can run at times, from sluggish frame rates to game breaking bugs.
Despite poor technological performance, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet change up the Pokémon formula like no Pokémon game has before. The open world approach clearly resonates with audiences, and Game Freak is taking the series in the right direction if the sales are anything to go by. We just hope that the mega success doesn’t prevent Game Freak from working on some major improvement patches to fix at least some of the many performance issues.
Did you pick up Pokémon Scarlet and Violet yet? Let us know in the comments below, and keep your eyes on GameLuster for more gaming news.
