Pokémon Sun And Moon Sells Nearly 2 Million Copies In Three Days In Japan

This is the first bit of really good news for Nintendo this year, especially from a financial point of view.

It's Pokémon being Pokémon - it always does great business, and Sun and Moon are great games to boot too!

Well done all around! Looking forward to picking my copy up tomorrow and seeing if it's worth all the hype...

@Mogster (it is)

Honestly, I'm a bit surprised that this didn't outpace X and Y. I mean, 2 million is still nothing to brush off, but I figured with all the Pokemon Go hype, there would be a more noticeable translation to sales.

@MitchVogel I think that digital sales need to start being included in these figures. I know plenty of people that opted to download this time instead of buying it physically.

@MitchVogel X&Y were the first 3DS Pokémon mainline games to be released. Sun & Moon will be the 3rd, so there's less of a novelty.

Yeah... can't really make an accurate comparison to the other games without the e-shop sales... you couldn't get full release games on e-shop when Black and White were released, and it's been slowly gaining popularity, so more people are now opting for digital over physical... so Sun and Moon may well have sold better than the other games if you were to take that into account.

Congratulations! Pokémon kept Nintendo afloat in the 90s and it looks like it's doing a good job of it now. I'm a huge fan of pokémon and look forward to many more succefsful launches.

Can't believe I used "Nintendo" & "Successful Launch" in the same paragraph.

Not as good as X&Y? Disappointing news.

@adamatsu People are increasingly downloading rather than buying physical copies, these numbers are unreliable. If Nintendo wasn't so old fashioned with it's numbers I'm sure we'd be seeing Sun & Moon trounce X&Y.

@DanteSolablood oh yea OK then, great, time to celebrate!

Congrats !
Hopefully bigger number of sales keep going.

I like Sun and Moon so far, but I don't consider them the best Pokémon games. (Also, one of my friends has a Japanese 3DS but lives in America, so he has to import a Japanese game all because of the stupid region-lock!)

Not surprising. If you look at the preorder numbers from the financial briefing Japan still preordered more copies of SM than XY, but the difference wasn't huge. I'd put my money on North America and Europe selling massive amounts at launch, outpacing XY's numbers.

There should be someway to track digital sales - how many people got digital due to them going digital only or wanting to play at 00:00 without worying about midnight launchs?

This is the silliest Pokemon game I have ever played. Seriously. I laugh at the ridiculousness of Team Skull every time they come on screen. I laughed at Kiawe's challenge, which is where I am on the second island. I laugh at the super serious Z-move poses. It is immensely silly. Just like its launch numbers.

Just goes to show that as long as you slap "Pokémon" on the box, you can lazily make your game barely run on the hardware, and it'll still sell.

I even feel a bit sad because its so much hype and fun around, but pokemon is just not my thing (

@RainbowGazelle What are you talking about? Pokemon S/M are amazing games, possibly the best Pokemon games yet. They're beautiful, fun, and run perfectly fine on my 3DS.

I love that thumbnail!

People buy digital copies of Pokémon?!
I couldn't imagine over a decade of Pokémon being lost over a random person on the street crushing my 3DS for no reason

I wasn't expecting a big increase on the XY figures as we know roughly how many Pokeman fans are out there these days, but I did expect it to at least match the increase in hardware since 2013. There's over 30% more 3DS owners out there since XY, so was sort of expecting a 30% increase in software too.

Famitsu regularly post digital numbers, and for most games in Japan digital accounts for 2-3% of total sales. Some of these figures will actually be included in this figure because this includes all the download cards sold in stores. Don't go expecting a huge difference with digital included.

@NoxAeturnus
Psst...don't forget the Trump look alike Pokemon. XD

@DragonEleven
Don't worry. There are some people who still like Physical copy rather than digital download. I am also collect Nintendo games in Physical copy. There is a satisfaction for collectors can owning a real thing that can be touched.

@Nintendoer I'm talking about horrendous, stuttering framerates, even when in a one-on-one battle, and virtually no 3D anywhere in the games.

I've got an original 3DS and it struggles a fair bit with S&M.
Still amazing game tho. 😃

I thought the Go affect would mean it would shift a fair bit more than that but I guess Digital sales are quite high as well.

@Nintendoer run well? These games struggle on the old 3DS. Any time there's a double battle the frame rate drops. Z moves cause the frame rate to drop as well.

@Anti-Matter I'm not worried... I'm the sort of person you're talking about, and know quite a few others who feel the same... I was just pointing out that that the e-shop figures could easily take the Sun and Moon sales above those of the other two pairs of games.

It prints money!!!

As the article states, it may have come in third, but this doesn't include digital sales, and I'm certain that it is at least close if not better than X and Y sales figures with digital included.

That pic of Pikachu is perfect btw. Hahaha.

@MitchVogel Maybe it's confirmation bias due to me actually caring about these games from the start while X was an impulse buy weeks after release, but it seems like there was so much more hype for Sun and Moon in general.

@Mogster No wait for console release!

@Mogster it is

I'd love to see numbers for both North America and Europe for a similar time period at launch, as well as totals. I'm sure the Pokemon Go hype is helping fuel these numbers.

Also, don't discount the holidays. I'm sure plenty of people have yet to finish their shopping.

Wow that is amazing considering Digital is not included.

@RainbowGazelle It's not Game Freak being lazy, it's that the 3DS hardware can't handle the game. The assets were downported to work on 3DS hardware.

I've had no framerate issues. There is a slight lag when a Pokemon is fainting though but not a big issue. I have a new 3DS xl though. I just finished Mallows Trial and so far it's definitely shaping up to be one of my favorite games in the series.

I'm glad it's doing so well. This game is incredible and I'm having so much fun with it. I love all the little changes they have made to the formula. It might be my favorite thus far.

@RainbowGazelle @LeRaposa Oh, I didn't know it was like that on Old 3DS. On my New 3DS it runs perfectly fine, save a few minor slowdown issues in intense cutscenes. I still think the game is great.

@IceClimbers And you know this, how? Other RPGs like Fire Emblem and Yo-kai Watch seem to run perfectly fine, and in 3D.

@RainbowGazelle Those games aren't nearly as detailed or cinematic as the gameplay in Sun/Moon from my experience. Yo-kai Watch is a lot more zoomed out and doesn't have to worry about the same amount of onscreen items and general detail.