Switch Gets A Major Retail Boost In The UK Thanks To Pokémon: Let's Go Success

UK gamers say: "Let's Go Shopping"

The Pokémon effect?

I am curious as to what effect this has had on actual hardware sales. Would be cool if the UK charted hardware sales like Japan does.

Spyro smashed Red Dead, BRILLIANT!
Wonder when they will announce it for Switch

Pokemon competing with Read Dead and Fallout. I never thought this day would come! What a joy!

Spyro uses nostalgia against the UK consumers

IT'S SUPER EFFECTIVE

I wonder if spyro will dominate the charts like crash bandicoot did.
Still, its nice Pokemon has a place and I'm sure will be under many a tree this year.

I bought Let's Go Eevee, £22.99 from Sainsbury thanks to their Nectar double up promotion.

I love the new change to catching Pokemon. They actually have to show up instead of random encounters. That's a good touch

This cannot be true, GTAV isn't on the list for the 958th time running...

@liljmoore yeah me too. I welcome the change to the series and it should stay. Makes the game aot more streamlined instead of random battles to gain xp and having to grind battles etc. I'm loving it at the moment. My pokeball plus did die on me tho and I had to return it for a swap. As I'd already redeemed Mew tho I now have another sitting in my new ball 😂

I think I'll wait for Spyro to come to Switch.

On an unrelated note, Starlink starter packs are available for £40.99 at Very, all formats. That should give an indication on how well/poorly that title is selling. Glad I got the US digital bundle. I really like the game, but it feels only half done, with more content being hinted at. It feels massively overpriced for what you get, especially if you go down the physical route.

Playing the game I understand that despite the changes it is a very much mainline pokemon game. I thought that was not the case reading internet comments. Enjoying it very much.

So if the two Pokemon games sold 116k copies between them, is it safe to assume a 60/40 ratio split between Pikachu and Eevee do you think? If that's the case, it means FIFA 19 being between the two must have sold around 50k copies last week! Never ceases to amaze me just how many people buy FIFA every year... it's been out, what, 10 weeks now? EA can just print money...

And naysayers were claiming these games wouldn't be system-sellers.

@Mountain_Man I think the naysayers still have a point... Switch install base must be coming up to around 700k in the UK now. To sell 116k week one means an attach rate approaching 15%. Solid, but not huge... but, that's current Switch owners. Perhaps a low attach rate highlights that the game is meant as a more casual, Pokemon Go audience and has actually driven enormous hardware sales this week... It's definitely possible. The marketing campaign for Let's Go was certainly aimed at casual gamers - to the point that it turned many core Switch owners off the game entirely (myself included). However, based on my gut feeling, the two are often closely aligned... so the 15% attach suggests to me that it's not been a huge system seller either... It definitely would have driven some significant growth in hardware sales, but if an average week was say 5k Switch sales, I'd suspect this week was around a 25k Switch sale week. Certainly a solid performance, but not at the heights of "system seller" in my opinion.

Mario Kart 8 DX was the 9th best-selling game of last week. It was the 22nd best-selling game during the same week last year.

It is very likely that Mario Kart 8 DX sells more copies during holiday 2018 than it did during holiday 2017.

@nocdaes
The Switch reached 700,000+ units sold in the UK back in February 2018. It's current install base is well over 1 million units.

They should have just released them as one title and let you choose your starter. The press from topping the charts will have been a good marketing strategy to generate more hype leading upto Christmas.

Fallout 76 in at number 3. I hope people who bought it enjoy it, but part of me wanted it to flop to teach Bethesda that the days of cashing in with unfinished buggy games is over. It would appear not.

I hope everyone buys Super Mario Party! It is brilliant

@BladedKnight
Agreed. We love Spyro and Crash. The PS1 was much more popular than the N64 so there are plenty of memories about those games.

@westman98 Hrmm OK, well that put's Pokemon closer to a 10% attach rate then. It's a solid attach, but it's not what a true Pokemon should achieve, and it doesn't suggest system seller.

@nocdaes
I don't think you should use attach rate as a way to determine whether a game was a system seller. Under those measures, virtually no game outside of the absolute biggest Year 1 titles would be considered "system sellers."

Pokemon Let's Go's launch caused a bunch of other Switch games to experience a massive week-over-week jump in sales, which would imply that many people bought a Switch to play Pokemon and other big titles. That indicates to me that Pokemon sold a lot of Switches.

I was in Asda this morning, saw 3 Switch consoles being sold whilst I was there!

I know it includes v-bucks and other stuff, but the Fortnite: Deep Freeze Bundle for £24.99 coming in at #8 is crazy

@nocdaes Your opinion is wrong reading the available statistics. Sorry for saying it so direct but that's the honest truth.

@Goldenlion54 Thats because red dead has taken its place. We'll get to see it for the next 958 weeks! Yay!

@westman98 Well, you are correct in that simply obtaining Hardware sales stats would be a more accurate measure... but with those seemingly unavailable, this is a good indicator. If a new game is released and it causes people to buy a console in order to play it, I'd argue that it's a bit of a stretch to then imply that people that already own the console wouldn't;t be interested in that same game... Now, whilst the two stats are not necessarily precisely linked, they are going to be pretty close surely?

I did forget digital sales though... Let's be super generous and assume a 50% digital attach. That means Let's go is up to circa. 230k sales and if 1m install base then a 23% attach. Now that is actually a very strong attach - it's not Mario, Mario Kart levels of attach, but yea. Is it system seller levels? Holiday season is young, we will see... I do believe this attempt to convert "casual mobile players" into Switch players is not as much of a done deal as some believe though.

Mario Kart 8 dropped from 6th to 9th, and there's no other Switch titles in the Top 10, so I don't get the significance of that point either... It's very likely Mario Kart 8 is in a lower chart position but did in fact sell more copies week on week (because there's so many new releases above it) but still, 9th in the UK chart, even in a week with 5 massive AAA releases would still be in the region of 15k-20k unit sales.

@Cosats Yep, I forgot the digital sales... (Although I'd argue we shouldn't have to remember it and these charts/ sales stats should combine the two automatically - it's like the dark ages or something!!)

If we include digital sales, then you're right, the performance is much stronger. I'm still not convinced it's system seller levels... but the holiday season is young. This very deliberate attempt to convert a casual gaming / mobile gaming audience into a Switch owner is one of those that looks solid on paper, but in reality, this lot are just playing Candy Crush on their mobiles... and no-one... knows... why... !!

@nocdaes Pokémon Sun and Moon only acheieved a 6% rate on 3DS. So Let’s Go is comparatively doing better.

Pokemon is perfect for what it is and will sell big this holiday season. And with the promis of another pokemon next year. Mario party is once again great. Mario kart best ever. Zelda and mario oddessy will sell with switches no matter what because they are great games. Smash bros is the nail in the coffin for sony any microsoft this holiday season.. get ready to see some big switch numbers sold by at latest early feburary to see how sales went.

Just wanted to pop in to say I am loving this game. So the review bombers (as if anyone worries about toxic gamers' thoughts) and naysayers can suck it.

@alasdair91 That's very true. Let's Go is a solid performance, I reiterate that point. I'm just questioning whether it's at the level Nintendo set their hopes on - and that so-called "system seller" status. It's clear the strategy was that they wanted to go after the casual Pokemon Go players and bring them across to Switch. I don't question the logic, I'm just not convinced this casual mobile gamer is taking the plunge into console gaming at anywhere near the rate that gets Nintendo to their 20 million stretch goal.

@dorkeybubblehead Yep, that's true too. There's no doubt in my mind that the Switch and Let's Go bundle is going to be a really hot pick to go under the Christmas tree this year. Again though, it's whether it's at the level Nintendo had set their hopes on...

@FragRed Worth knowing that GFK do track Hardware sales weekly, but the information isn't available to the public - publishers who have the service do get a weekly breakdown on hardware sales. They're super interesting to see.

But on individual format sales, they are second and fourth:

@MJL That's a shame, wonder why hardware sales are only available to publishers and not the public? Japan doesn't hide these figures and I don't think NPD does either.

Let's have a look at those legs going forward! pfffft

@FragRed I'm not entirely sure but my assumption is that if they made them publicly available they wouldn't be able to charge for the info!

@3rdParty It's a good point regarding Wii U, although I think you're forgetting that it's all relative... If a Wii U game has a high attach rate, then absolutely that game is likely to have boosted Wii U hardware sales - but only relative to it's typical sales figures. So if it sold 100 units in a normal week, selling 1000 units when a big game launched is a 10x increase and is still a direct consequence of the game launching.

Using attach rate as an indication of the success of a game and associated hardware sales does make sense - it's by no means full proof like-for-like - but it's a solid indication. Of course the tricky part is knowing what ratio is deemed successful... but again, I think a little common sense can at least point in the general direction of Good, Bad and Mediocre, at least.

I think Let's Go points towards a "Good" scenario... but it's on the lower end of that scale. I think Nintendo's 20 million ambition needed it to be through-the-roof... but let's see. I don't level that as a criticism by the way, Switch is great and Nintendo are doing a great job. I just firmly believe they put a lot of eggs in the "convert the Pokemon go casual gamer into a Switch owner" basket, and it's not quite as simple as they thought.

I thought these games were going to bomb,the internet posting YouTube minority told me so.

@MJL Seems odd to make software sales free to view but not the hardware sales. Oh well, I am sure Nintendo will be shouting about it soon enough.

@johnvboy so you told yourself the games were going to bomb? Odd...

Welcome to the Holidays. I'm curious how Let's Go is gonna do in Japan.

I'm having fun with the game. It worked the other way around for me and I'm playing a bit of Pokemon Go now.

@NintenGuy,

I was being sarcastic,a lot of posters on the internet and YouTube seem to think the game would not do well.

@nocdaes
Let's be very clear: Only a single Pokemon game (Sun/Moon) has sold anywhere close to 200,000+ retail copies at launch in the UK, and that was a brand new entry released on a large 3DS install base released back when Pokmeon Go was still massive. Everything other game in the series has sold below 150,000 retail copies at launch.

In fact, there are only 2 Nintendo games in general that have sold over 200,000 retail copies at launch in the UK: Pokemon Sun/Moon and Wii Fit. I think you are asking of way too much when you claim that specific games need higher attach rates in order to be considered system sellers.

This is the first Pokemon game I've skipped, and after seeing the gameplay from people playing I'm sure glad I did. This game looks boring and way more repetitive than even normal pokemon. I do hope they eventually release Spyro trilogy on Switch then i'll pick it up, besides 2 weeks from now I've got Just Cause 4 and Smash coming.

Good to see Spyro taking the top spot. It looks like a fantastic remaster and I'm so happy to see Toys for Bob's plucky purple dragon doing so well. I'd love to pick it up for myself, my plan is to wait for a Switch release but a good PS4 Black Friday deal might get the better of me...

Meanwhile I'm playing Let's Go Eevee and really enjoying it, much much more than I enjoyed Sun & Moon. That game just got a bit too complicated for my liking.

Nicely done for Spyro. Considering how long Crash ended up number 1 for, it could be the surprise number 1 throughout December.

Now about that Switch version.....

This is UK, I bet in Japan, it will be a lot different.

really people are buying fallout 76 i heard it's Garbage.

@NewAdvent it may seem like that since you see let's go pikachu on 4th place and 6th for let's go evee. However, it was reported that both SKUs combined place on number 1 in the chart. I would say they are doing pretty well.

I picked it up from Sainsburys as they had the double up nectar points deal on last week so got it for free. Otherwise I wouldn't have paid full price for it.

@MattFox If you read the article, Pokemon is the top selling game this week. Number 1, its the two skews that make them seperate listings.

@Angelic_Lapras_King Actually, Pokemon is number 1- Did you read the article? If the 2 skews are combined, they beat Spyro.

@nocdaes Hmm combined, its the best selling game in the UK counting only physical copies. I think the first report is pretty satisfying to Nintendo. The same way Labo sold 1.8 million units to date. When you want to piost , get the facts.

Last , if Spyro was on switch, it would be the top selling skew over Ps4 & xbox. But thats opinion. i bought Spiderman for Ps4, Fallout 76 for xbox 1, and pokemon, Smash, & Diablo 3 for Switch as Xmas gifts for my boys. Im not buying Spyro until its Switch release.Its best suited for Switch.

@anthonyd1972b Yeh, I know. Even if Pokemon is winning, it is still competing...

@anthonyd1972b It is indeed the best selling video game in the UK, this week... I don't really see how that means anything though? GTA V was the best selling video game in the UK on 4 or 5 occasions this year (how many weeks after launch? 150+?)... Crash Bandicoot Reboot was number one for practically the entire Summer... It's all relative.

Anyway, I've said all along the performance is solid. I'm just questioning whether it's done enough for Nintendo. Let's be clear here. They have chosen to release a very casual, broad reaching, "watered-down" in the eyes of many seasoned gamers, Pokemon game with the primary intention of getting mobile Pokemon GO players to get their wallets out and buy a Switch. I'm merely questioning whether that strategy has worked as well as they had predicted/hoped. I don't think it has. I'm not criticising the approach, or the game - I just believe these casual mobile gamers are not interested in buying a Switch - they're too busy spending £50 a month on Candy Crush micro transactions...

Wouldn't the latest entries in the series be Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon from last year? Those weren't these runaway selling games either, and as you point out, 3DS had a higher install base. Compare Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon to Let's Go Pikachu and Let's Go Eevee, they're likely more comparable.