Pokémon Sword And Shield Sold A Phenomenal 16 Million Copies In Under Two Months

Well, it's literally the highest grossing franchise, so no surprise, it's just a shame that the games feel so budget-y compared to so many other games.

Very sad to see
(at least it's good for switch sales)

It's a little unfair to compare its sales to non Pokemon titles as its sales are inflated somewhat by having 2 versions. Even so they are very impressive numbers and I have been tempted by one of these despite not playing any since X and Y

The funny thing is that it could've sold more if some people didn't boycott.

@Daldra
I think most of the people who "boycotted" the game bought it. And played it.

Literally millions and millions of people have been enjoying the game and are looking forward to continuing to enjoy the game with Pokemon Home and the coming DLC. I've dropped over 200 hours into and I love it! Can't wait for the new additions!

And that loud minority online will still call them "sheep" "stupid fanboys" and other things that would probably get me banned for quoting. Oh, and they will argue that sales for this game don't matter because it's Pokemon and it will "sell anyway".

No one's obligated to like a game or to keep quiet about why they dislike it. But it would be nice if they could keep their criticisms to that and avoid all the personal attacks.

Oh and one last thing:

Your personal like or dislike of a game is not what determines if a game is good or bad.

And with that, Sword/Shield is now the fastest-selling Nintendo game of all time.

Well use all this money to create something EPIC a big open world where you NEED your Pokémon to survive

@Heavyarms55 Pokemon Home is definitely a weird one to me. It's just another case of ''they can get away with it'' I think.

Pokemon files are small, only a couple of bytes; around 250 bytes per Pokemon. Storing 8000 Pokemon means you'll use up around 2MB of data. That's nothing really.

OneDrive gives you 5GB of free storage space. Google gives anyone 15GB. But for Pokemon it's €16 a year for a measly 2MB of storage.

If ten million people used Pokemon Home to store 8000 Pokemon, that's 2MB per person. 20TB in total. 2TB of storage on Google costs €100 per year; or €1000 for 20TB. The Pokemon Company asks €16million for that. Mental really. And I know they also locked the GTS behind a paywall now, so there's that, but still, it feels very out of proportion to me.

Cue another thread where everyone loses their minds.

I have learnt my lesson from past articles so I am out of here! Have fun people.

@Octane Welcome to economics. Things are worth what people will pay for them. Almost nothing people buy is actually, accurately, priced based on the costs that go into it.

Home doesn't bother me at all. I think the price is fine. 3 dollars is less than a pack of Pokemon cards for people who just want to transfer their mons. And there's nothing stopping people from leaving Pokemon they can't bring to Sw/Sh in their old games for now and then buying another 3 dollar month in the future whenever another generation comes around. There's really no need for people to pay for the service indefinitely if they don't want to.

But to be clear, you're not wrong, if Home WERE based purely on what it costs to run the service, it should be basically next to nothing or a one time low cost purchase.

Insane how much it’s sold. Almost a third of every switch sold. This is both packaged and digital right?

@Octane

My thoughts exactly. I'd really love to see this series produce something as impressive as Breath of the Wild. They clearly could justify the budget for it.

This was the only Pokémon game that I stopped playing because I just lost interest.

To be honest I wasn’t a hater pre-release ..... but after finishing the game and collecting the new pokes, I can honestly say these are the WORST main entry games in all the series (Having played all of them)

Something something sheeple, something something brand power.

It's because Pokemon is a household name now and they finally put it on a home console (wii was their big chance before) that is performing really well. I mean, you get even standard club goers cosplaying as Pikachu now. It's a little over bearing, especially when it is outselling BotW which clearly had way more effort put into it.

@Daldra We're right to. It's a shame people I know that were on the fence caved and bought it.

Honestly, I am not entirely sure what would kill the Pokemon franchise at this point. Not necessarily saying I want it to die (I have no personal stake either way), but it seems that all the controversy regarding this does not seem to have affected it one bit, and Home seems to be a bad deal to me personally, but then again, I am not invested in Pokemon anyway so I could be missing something; I have only finished Pokemon Y for example.

There is one thing that is for certain based on these sales; the Pokemon Company very clearly have a lot of money that could probably do with being invested in the games.

@Heavyarms55 I can't wait for Home. It looks great. The ability to trade Pokémon via mobile phone? A bargain at twice the price.

Cool.

Pokemon Home can still go to hell.

But cool

@Heavyarms55 assuming we're accounting for everything about the costs, of course. https://mobile.twitter.com/CarmenCrincoli/status/1222198152406556672

Disappointing, but expected. My brother asked for it for Christmas and I figured I'd give it a shot. Imo it's the worst of the core Pokemon games.

Well, Pokemon Sword was quite entertaining for me despite of mediocre storyline. 🙂
I have finished the main storyline, still want to catch Zacian and other Pokemons.

@Heavyarms55
I gave you 1 ❤ to counter the downvotes

Yeeeees

The second best pokemon game

So happy about it, also this is $60 vs $40

@GKO900
"and to see some people defend Game freak scummy decisions like if the do no wrong."

Err... WUT ? 🤨
Pokemon Sword / Shield wasn't really bad as you felt.

Gaaah! I looked at the comments. 🤦🏻‍♂️

This is so sad, can we smash 5+ dislikes for me having an opinion diffrent from others

Awesome result and well deserved, there was a lot of work that has gone into these games no matter what the naysayers would have you believe, of course there are issues but on the whole these are great games, and with the expansion packs and low yearly cost of Pokemon home, it's a good time to be a Pokemon fan, just buy the games and play em and have some.

@Zuljaras,

They do tend to make it a little personal when they hint the people that have bought these games would buy anything with Pokemon in the title, suggesting they do not have the same standards as the complainers, or are in some way stupid.

I mean, the serebii dude said it's his second or third favorite pokemon game

and he knows his pokemon

@Heavyarms55,

You are totally right, and this just goes to show that it was only the minorities on gaming forums that had any issues with these games, not to say that their complaints are not valid at a personal level, or their right to voice their issues, but I just think that they were always determined not to like these games, as I have said they are not perfect but far from the bad games some are stating.

I guess the majority of people were not bothered by the national dex whiners

@Zuljaras,

That's your personal opinion and choice not to buy the games, it does not in anyway prove these games are bad, or that the mass Pokemon fans will simply buy anything.

@Jfarriol,

What kids game with a childish plot, how the hell did that happen?.

@johnvboy Totally agree, and with the dlc to keep things interesting throughout the year.

I have been thinking lately at a comparison between pokemon and smash bros reactions to additional cost to the original game. When I bought the 'Ultimate' game which stated that 'everyone' was included I expected that to be the truth, but it isn't because we already have two lots of dlc and more to be announced. Yet I don't see anybody moaning about this and if I did I get the feeling I may get shouted down by the loud opinionated people on here!

i mean sales is probably the only way to gauge if games are good or bad compared to the series, pokemon was on a downfall (kinda minor, but it was)

and Sw/Sh seems to have revive the series to it's old numbers

i guess thats a good metric to say the games are indeed good, i doubt these had way more marketing compared to the lastest entries

It’s Pokémon. It will sell just as Fifa sells

@1UP_MARIO tell that to the last few entries that sold less and less

@dew12333 - To be fair, the "Everyone is here" phrase was saying that everyone from previous games was included in this one, which turned out to be the case: all these DLC fighters are new ones being added to the game rather than old ones being re-introduced (as was the case in Smash 4).

Kinda figured it'd sell fairly well, but nowhere near as well as it's actually done. I mean, compared to....pretty much anything, these are phenomenal figures for such a small timeframe, especially given how well the main games were performing recently (compare the sales mentioned in the article with the sales of the first four gens), along with the controversy surrounding the game prior to release. Not sure what's caused this turn-around, but whatever the case, kudos to GameFreak for their success.

@dew12333,

Of course you will, and the main complainers have not even shown up yet, they just can't realize that lots of people like these games and have not issues with them, in a while we will get comments stating that sales do not equal enjoyment etc, trust me they will cling onto any thin argument just to show they were right and everyone else is wrong.

@Zuljaras,

No issues with your opinions on here, but at some point even the people that do not like these games have to concede that perhaps not everybody feels the same way as they do, and it can't always be that Pokemon fans would buy anything, as if that were true the let's go games would have sold exactly the same.

Imagine what the next Pokemon game could sell on an even larger Switch installed base if it were actually high quality on the level of Dragon Quest 11 or one of Nintendo's other main franchises?

I enjoyed Pokemon Shield, but it does feel like it was done on the cheap rather than going all out on what could be done on the Switch.

@johnvboy Their opinions are valid and there are issues with the game. There are issues with every game.

What was abnormal with Pokemon was the degree of anger people online had/have. It became the popular thing to do, to bash on Sw/Sh. And that rapidly evolved into peer pressure to attack anyone who didn't join in the hive mind.

@Heavyarms55,

Any opinion is valid on a personal level, but like you say the total amount of hate is way out of proportion imho.

Sw/Sh is on track to become the third best-selling set of Pokemon games of all time. Really gives you a sense of how unrepresentative the crying and gnashing of teeth online from disaffected fans really was.

For myself, though, I'm likely done. I can put up with a lot of things, but having GTS only usable via mobile device, AND connected to a paid service? Nah. It's clear they ruined the game's multiplayer functionality (which was SO good in X/Y) in order to push this service, and I'm just not cool with that.

@Jayofmaya Are you implying the Game Boy, GBA, DS, and 3DS were unsuccessful? That's impressively false.

@Doofenshmirtz I contributed

We did guys, the boycott worked!

@Anti-Matter Look it sold well because it's Pokémon, kids ask parents for it and ignorance of the content of the game but for people that wonder why some dislike this game let me explain why

1 GameFreak lied about their high quality animation
2 Cut content for the High quality graphics
3 Selling that content as DLC
4 Charging triple for storing and transferring
5 Removing features just add new gimmicks and some behind a paywall
And there's more but this are the most important ones that I remember and my personal is the starters and legendary Pokémon are ugly and the worst from any generation
Now the real question is why people blindly defend a company that only cares about your money? And likes to arguing facts, it's like saying that they love sh*t and they are in their right to love it and don't understand why other don't

Proof https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MtyBjFygWHg

Where has the haters gone, though? In all seriousness, I'm just glad there are no longer a lot of whiners, even if there may be that occasional complaint here or there. But there's no more blatant, heavy whining which was trying to ruin other peoples' consideration on whenever to buy this game or not.

@Faruko I wouldn't say sales is a great measure to use in this particular case. If 16 million people buy it because they're hyped, but only 10 million like it, then it's the sales of the DLC and the next installment that might take a hit.

Sword and Shield is the first time a new full Pokémon game has launched on a home console/hybrid, they were destined to sell well in the first few weeks regardless of how good they actually are. Most of those buying it in the first few weeks only have critics' reviews and marketing to base their decision on, they don't know how good they'll find it until they've played it for themselves.

@gcunit,

But I bet if they sold low numbers others would see this as a justification of how they were right all along, they can't have it both ways.

@Ralizah,

Respect your point of view here, and any other fan that has an issue with the game and refuses to buy it, while not suggesting that anyone who has bought it is easily pleased, just wish you could have liked it as you sound like a big Pokemon fan to me.

@johnvboy Here's a challenge for you: find another post by me on the internet that disparages these games.

My post above does not criticise the games whatsoever, it only posits that initial sales figures are not an ideal measure for determining how good the games are. 16 million doesn't mean the games are good or bad, it just means 16 million people (minus those that bought multiples) wanted to try them.

@gcunit the lack of any copies at any Cex I've visited in the last month suggests people are pretty happy with the end game. That's about 8 stores in major cities up and down the UK. The same could not be said of the last GTA release (for example) which was littering 2nd hand games stores after release.

Personal taste is personal taste but huge sales numbers for a game normally mean it is a bit good.

@gcunit,

Yes because 16 million people have all rushed out and bought a game they thought was rubbish.

My reply to you was based on your post, I do not take into account or even have the inclination to review all of your previous posts regarding this game to find out if you like it or not.

This whole sales thing is so flawed however, as if a universally acclaimed game sells well there is no issue, it's only when there is a small amount of division and in this case it's a minority, that the sales indicating a good game is ever called into question.

@RadioHedgeFund How well did The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker films do on opening weekend?

How many people, having watched those films on opening weekend, thought they were good?

How many people watched the Game of Thrones finale?

Early sales, of anything, do not necessarily reflect how well received something is, they just reflect hype levels, marketing success etc.

Imagine if they actually put more work into making the game better than it was it probably would have already outsold everything at this point. It's not a terrible game, but it just could be so much more if they put just a little bit more effort into the series. I'm hoping the expansions are better than buying a sequel or 3rd version of the game that they would usually do. Only time will tell, I generally have a lot of troubles coming back to games for DLC so that tends to be a problem with DLC as well.

@johnvboy You said I'd claim justification that I was 'right all along'. I never made any predictions about these games so what am I right about?

@gcunit

I will change my post, as I said I have never looked at your previous posts to see what you thought about these games, my comment was aimed at the naysayers in general wanting it both ways.

Sorry about that, and I do agree to a point that sales do not indicate enjoyment, but apart from the excessive moaning on the internet I have seen nothing to indicate that the masses are not happy with these games.

Did they share the physical/digital ratio?

So of course they couldn't afford to model and animate all the Pokemon.

@GKO900
"Now the real question is why people blindly defend a company that only cares about your money? "

Because i am a CASUAL gamer.
Don't really bothering with some changes.
I ACCEPT the features from Pokemon Sword / Shield Just the Way It Is.
Whatever Gamefreak bring to their Pokemon, bring it on !
As long their games are NOT broken, i'm already content.
I have finished my Pokemon Sword and it was okay for me.
Too bad, you didn't even understand my satisfaction after playing Pokemon Sword.

Say whatever you want to say, but i will keep say this to you :
"I Don't Care with some Flaws inside !"

@johnvboy Not sure I'd say I'm a BIG fan. Definitely a long-time fan, though, seeing as how my first game was Pokemon Red on the GB.

I bought the game at launch and played for about fifteen hours before just sort of... stopping. I'm happy for the people who enjoy these games, but between the irritating raid system, overtly linear SP campaign, and now basic things like online trading being subsumed by paid mobile services, I feel like the series has turned into something I don't even really recognize anymore.

Definitely don't let my lack of enjoyment, or anyone else's judgment, make you feel like you shouldn't be enjoying these games, though.

@Octane I 100% agree with your point of Home being too expensive. But just a small correction: GTS is not behind a paywall. It will be available on the free plan of Home

@johnvboy I don't think the game is good, let alone amazing, and I got it day one. Reason? I hoped this one would bring changes to the series I would've liked to see. I got it day one because I've been spoiled since gen 3, so going in a game without knowing the Pokemon was fun for a change. But I don't think I'll get the DLC or Home. It's just all too expensive for what it really is IMO.

So I still really enjoyed/enjoy Pokemon Sword/Shield, and would consider it one of my favorite games of 2019. But it could have been soooo much better. I was secretly hoping Sword/Shield didn't sell well, so that it would send a message to the Pokemon Company+Game Freak to up their game in the future. Unfortunately, the insane sales numbers prove otherwise. I guess I'm part of the problem since I bought it, but in my defense I haven't really gotten a mainline Pokemon game since Gold/Silver/Crystal (except for Sun, played 2 hours and quit because of how much it dragged on).

@Tulio517 I'm not sure if that makes the Home sub better or not. At least they didn't lock it behind a paywall (though it's mobile only, which is kinda stupid as well); but that does mean you get even less for your sub...

Nice! Anyone who doesn’t like it just shouldn’t buy their games, but it seems a lot of people do given it made all this despite the controversies.

Either way, I’m glad to hear this, I think it’s way better than the past two gens.

I'm splitting this comment into two.

Tongue-in-cheek: ZOMG A Pokemon article! Sharpen those pitchforks and get those torches ready! The SKY is FALLING!

Normal: Impressive figures indeed. I can't comment on the quality of Sw/Sh as I haven't played them yet, but it's clear that there still might be a market for Pokemon. I'll judge for myself at some point as to the quality, but I'm in no hurry as my Switch backlog is cluttered right now.

I have no problem if people like or dislike the games; many of those positives and negatives seem legitimate, and tastes vary. Disagreement is fine; it's the ad hominem attacks and insults from all sides of the fence that are unproductive.

@Octane,

I think these games are great which is just my own personal opinion, the format suits my gaming time perfectly, and I can't wait for the DLC packages, the Pokemon themselves have the clean look I have always wanted, I can see why some would be upset, but not me.

@Darthroseman Home console.

Good Sales numbers. I still have to jump in.

They should release the next Pokemon title as 4 separate SKUs, and compare to other games which only have 1. That would be even more impressive!

And here I was thinking that the higher price would affect sales. I guess people were more excited for a console Pokemon title than I thought, and that's just the start. With two packs of DLC (so far, there could be more), it's got a chance to have some great longevity. Looks like cutting out the mid gen titles was the right move-no need for it if the sales and DLC do well.

@Yorumi,

Or the masses judge a game on it's individual merits and what content it does have, rather than focusing on whats missing from a game and all the negatives, a game will not sell without some value, no matter what the naysayers say.

Im so glad for this. This game will cruise the 20 million easily

I love the game, but I'm annoyed that the internet functionality is locked behind the online subscription service. I have the online subscription only because it came included with Mario Maker 2, but my son can't use any internet functions because we would need a family account (at 35 bucks a year) or another individual account for him. So dumb.

@Anri02 Thank you metal slime from dragon quest that I can never kill, your actions won't be forgotten

@Yorumi,

The quality or pricing of a game is very subjective, you and others personally do not like the dex cut and length of the game, while others have bought the game and put many hours into it, so this does not make either of you correct, as it's still a personal opinion at the end of the day.

But you can't always argue that the sales of the game are down to people accepting anything given to them, not when a game has sold 16 million copies thus far.

I will personally judge every Pokemon game or any other game for that matter on it's individual merits, and it's worth to me personally, and as I have said many times I like these new games, they are not perfect but still offer lots of fun and entertainment as far as I am concerned.