With Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!'s release date coming ever closer, the official Japanese Pokémon Twitter account has shared information on the pre-order bonuses available in the region. Needless to say, they happen to be much more extravagant than the western counterparts.
As you can see, Japanese pre-orders will come with a figure - depending on which version you buy - and a lovely looking art book is given to those who grab both versions of the game. It's worth noting that the figures are only prototypes - hence their unfinished-looking state.
For comparison's sake, current pre-order bonuses in the UK are made up entirely of these keychains seen below. It's a welcome addition, of course, but it's a shame that the figures and art book don't appear to be making their way to western shores.
Will you be pre-ordering the games? Do you wish you could have the Japanese exclusive goodies? Tell us below.
[source nintendosoup.com]
Comments (55)
@BladedKnight
The truth hurts. Especially when you guys get all the soundtracks too.
They need that kind of extras because the pre orders are really low for a Pokemon game.
https://nintendosoup.com/pokemon-lets-go-pikachu-eevee-pre-orders-are-falling-at-an-alarming-rate/
Maybe North America will get something too. It's still a few months away.
@LordGeovanni Not for Octopath Traveller though.
@Cobalt I’m actually surprised that pre-orders are below average. This seems to suggest that GameFreak’s plan to bring a more casual audience to a £300 console doesn’t seem to have worked. I’m still excited for these games anyway.
If I'm going to be spending up to AU$260 for what is shaping up to be the most expensive (and quite possibly worst) main series Pokémon games of all time, they had better throw in some extras over to our side of the pond.
I think the UK preorder bonus is a bit meh - even if we couldn't have figures, I'd rather have the better plush keychains that the US is getting... With Grainger gone, there's likely not going to be another preorder bonus available... Looks like GAME and Argos are each getting one of the two keychains that're available through the Nintendo store, so that's really both the stores that usually get bonuses accounted for...
@TheFanatic
I personally think that it makes sense.
This game is a casual "PokémonGoish" Pokémon. A lot of fans want a real new pokémon game more than that kind of thing.
Do you remember when Metroid fans begged for a new Metroid and Nintendo gave Federation Forces ? It's a kind of similar situation, not as bad but we are on the same kind of things.
Tempting. Though this is actually the first Pokemon game, I am not getting excited for in a number of years. @Cobalt , and there was me thinking something was wrong with me for not being interested in the Let's Go games. A wiff of Pokemon Go mechanics, just kills it for me.
@Rafke
Owwww BELGIE <3
I love your country man ( and your beers )
@Cobalt That title is a bit misleading for what the article content is. They’re treating preorders and current games as the same product. Not to say that preorders haven’t fallen off from first announcement, I just don’t think that comparison by Amazon categories is a good metric. It’ll be interesting to see where the first month’s sales end up at.
@HobbitGamer
I disagree on that. Not the 1st month's sales but the global sells.
This game will never reach what a "real" pokémon game would do.
I think that the more we're getting closer to release date, and advertisement and word of mouth spreads on the preorders will get stronger and stronger. Its pokemon lets not rush into conclusions that it will not be a smash hit... I'm afraid the "spin-off" flavour kinda confuses people about the nature of the game.
@Rafke
Heyyyy Dude ! mijn vrouw is Vlaams !
We live in France and she left Belgium because of what you just explain above. ^^
But to be honest with you, as a freaking froggy Frenchy, I love Belgium for :
_ Beers
_ Comics
_ Chocolates
_ Waffles
_ Jacques Brel
etc...
My guess would be that the Japanese are not as excited for these games as the west, so some kind of a bonus has to be thrown in to make it more attractive. Westerners will buy them no matter what, so there's no point in giving away extra items.
She's on a hat. In the background. And they still manage to put Eevee in a T&A pose. Bravo Japan.
Her being a pokémon is the least surprising part about the whole thing by now.
@Cobalt Yeah I saw a video about that nintendosoup article, and doesn't shock me. Though let's be honest if more casuals are truly getting the switch they are not the type that would pre-order. However I still feel their gamble that a bunch of Go players are buying switches and going to pick this up is not going to pay off as much as they hope. I'm still sticking with I feel this is going to undersell, alienating a majority of the hardcore fans that think this doesn't look very fun due to the Go mechanics being shoved in could lead to lower overall sales if the Go users are not getting switches and the game.
@Rafke Just out of interest, why are you sceptical of Smash Ultimate? It would be nice to see a contrasting opinion.
If one were to judge the Let’s Go by these comments alone, you’d come to the conclusion these games were just ports of Pokémon Go...
@Rafke That’s fair. I see where you are coming from with the plastic design, but I think it is an attempt to link with the fact that all the fighters are meant to be toys in a kids bedroom.
Personally, I feel the gameplay has really been upgraded from Smash 4. It runs at a much faster tempo, and as said in the E3 Direct, the changes number in the thousands.
In a way, I sort of agree with you on the overblown roster. While it’s nice to have so many options, I feel a quantity over quality approach may have been taken to the roster.
@BladedKnight @Rafke Kunnen we er een Benelux thread van maken?
Cool. Free stuff is always good. And Art books are my fav extra in general!
@UmbreonsPapa
Adopting Pokemon Go's wild battle catching mechanic=> The whole game is a Pokemon Go port
Apparently that's how things work nowadays.
@Cobalt I've seen that article going around, I want to know what Sun and Moon's Amazon rankings were around this time, and what both games look like with their combined sales. Given that Amazon splits them up. Combined Sun and Moon would be about __th place, and combined Let's Go Pikachu, Let's Go Eevee, LG Pikachu Poke Ball Plus Bundle, and LG Eevee Poke Ball Plus Bundle. Having it split 4 ways messes with placement in my mind, and it'd be more concrete evidence that sales aren't doing as well if they were combined.
@HobbitGamer The comparison I see that works is the pre-order points for Sun/Moon from four months to release, but then we have to take into account that the core fanbase was all-in on those titles, and Let's Go has yet to sell to that audience (and I'm doubtful they'll even try to do so, if only one new Pokemon is in the game). Aside from that, though, the article does look like cherrypicking statistics I'd like to see expanded upon.
@UmbreonsPapa Haha! Yep, that's the fanbase for you! The better comparison is calling it Safari Zone: The Game. It's still Pokemon, just for the younger or more casual crowd, and I think most of the people coming and reading/commenting on this article would be in the veteran/hardcore crowd and might be a bit... abrasive to these games.
@TheFanatic to be fair though, casual players probably aren't going to preorder. They will buy on impulse when they see it on shelves, or see someone playing it.
I remember when a lot of Pokemon preorders (here in the US) came with neat extras like figurines. I still have my GBA SP case from my Emerald version, a weird yet awesome Dialga stylus from Diamond, and figures of Lugia and Giratina's Origin Forme for their respective games.
I know there have been some since, but they were usually kinda...lame.
@Bisylizzie bruhreally? The UK stores have the keychains, the US stores have no pre order bonuses at all.
Bad game with the worst advertising ever to fans they actually didn't show us anything new in all the trailers they showed and all the pokemon fandom srtick to handheld consoles and a game like this isn't going to make them buy a switch good job masuda your endless greed isn't doing you any good like the games that sold millions just by rereleasing a game with little improvement was bad what is he looking for?
@Tim_Vreeland Yeah, that makes sense. Hopefully that will be enough though.
@bruhreally Well, I'd say the Pokemon Center counts as a store, right?
For example, https://www.pokemoncenter.com/pok%C3%A9mon%3A-lets-go--eevee%21-for-nintendo-switch-716-59397 "Preorder bonus: Receive an Eevee plush key chain with your preorder of Pokémon: Let's Go, Eevee! from Pokémon Center. Available only while supplies last."
@Cobalt I'll play devil's advocate this time. Federation Force is actually a pretty good game (a terrible Metroid game, but good game overall nonetheless). It can be pretty challenging, especially if you play solo without the 1 player mod and the assist bots, and it is really fun to play with other people too and I would imagine it would be even better if you can actually talk with them. Unlike Federation Force, Let's Go strips Pokémon from a lot of things that make the game, well, Pokémon, and it doesn't seem make up for it. The only possible way I can see this game being fun is that you are a kid or play with a younger sibling or your son/daughter. Not even my girlfriend is interested in this.
@Bisylizzie Lmao, but get this: you said u wished the UK had the keychains, so you had wrong information either way. 😂
@Rafke The amount of fighters in Smash 4 was quite a bit. But at the end of the day, you aren't required to use them all and I get the sense most people end up havimg a handful they only use anyway. The gameplay for all of the Smash games, at their core, are the same. It appears to me for those looking to play a bit more than casually, they made it a point to change things up in that respect. If you aren't a competitive player, you're probably not gonna see too much of a difference from any other Smash. But I can completely understand skipping an entry or being cautious of one in a series when it looks like the changes may not warrant an entire new game. It's why I stopped buying Madden games
@TrendanBrendan
Prior to its launch, Pokemon Sun/Moon was the single most pre-ordered game in Nintendo's history.
It's a very tall order to expect Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee to even come close to Sun/Moon's pre-order numbers, especially given the 3DS's huge install base in late 2016 and the fact that Let's Go is casual-focused Gen 1 remake rather than a brand new hardcore focused Pokemon entry.
Even the new core-focused 2019 Pokemon game will have trouble matching Pokemon Sun/Moon's pre-order numbers.
@Cobalt except they're not, there's no numbers to even back that claim up, heck the games were at the top of the charts for the first few weeks after announcement, and all games do down in terms of charting in pre-orders after a while, not to mention most people don't pre-order games so this really doesn't indicate how well the games will do at all, all we know is it'll be VERY Successful.
@Cobalt when 8th gen comes out on switch next year they will sky rocket
@westman98 I disagree on 2019 pokemon it will match sun/moon
Of course we get nothing I remember getting a cool giratina figure with pokemon platinum, why would they stop doing that?
@Slim1999
Anything is possible, but it will be hard.
1) Pre-order numbers are down across the entire industry due to the growing emphasis on games-as-a-service, which decreases the importance of Day 1 sales
2) Digital sales on Switch are significantly greater than digital sales on the 3DS, which will increase digital pre-load numbers but decrease physical pre-order numbers
3) While the Switch is very successful and will continue to sell very well, I don't think it will reach ~ 65 million units sold by the end of 2019, which is how much the 3DS had sold by the end of 2016 (Install base isn't everything of course - current Switch software sales are far better than 3DS software sales have ever been despite only being ~18 months old).
4) Pokemon Sun/Moon was the only notable Nintendo game of 2016 (i.e. it was the only Nintendo game that sold more than 2 million copies in 2016). Pokemon 2019 will have to content with a lot of other big releases, including the legs from evergreen titles like Mario Kart 8 DX/Breath of the Wild/Mario Odyssey/Splatoon 2/Smash Bros Ultimate.
Hope you are right, though.
they will probably ship out something special to sell this game, the reaction to this game is tame to put it nicely and from what i have seen its not doing anything special to stand out other than having pokes following you again.
No such preorder bonuses for the those of us in the US huh? sigh At least we get the game though right?
@Cobalt Do you have anything positive to say?
@Matthew010 said "Do you have anything positive to say?"
Dunno if you talk about 2018 on Switch but if it's the case, I'd say :
_Octopath Traveler was not bad and... hummmm, yeah that's all...
Didn't we already get a news article for this?
@Cobalt You obviously have very limited taste in games...
@Rafke mogen Nederlanders ook mee doen? Maken we er een nederlandstalige thread van
@Matthew010 said "You obviously have very limited taste in games..."
Absolutely not,
it's the choice that is really limited on the Switch, not my taste.
Not my fault if 2018 is just dry as hell, espacially when you are a Wii U owner like me.
@Cobalt I was a Wii U owner too, and I've boughr about 8 games this year.
@Matthew010
Do you include ports, indies, shovelwares in the total of 8 ?
@Cobalt Two ports - Minecraft and Hyrule Warriors. Otherwise, no.
@Matthew010
ok, the 6 others are ?
@Cobalt That's a bit nosy, but Kirby, LABO 1 and some others. I'm away right now so I can't remember the rest.
You really won't give up until I tell you the Switch's second year sucks and the Switch is doomed, will you? Go to PushSquare - I'm sure you'll find a large group of people there who share your opinion. Come back when you're not as narrow-minded.
@Matthew010
No that's not what I want at all... I respect other opinion without any problem.
Just that I THINK the last 9 months suck !
@Cobalt Fair enough, but please don't bring negativity to a lot of Nintendo Life articles.
@Matthew010
I just bring what I feel. Imagine tomorrow, Nintendo brings a Wave Race that kills everything to the Switch, I'll be the 1st one to bring ULTRA positivity... Imagine Nintendo will announce a fantastic new IP with wonderful gameplay, I'll be in the 1st row waving my hands in the air and explain how awesome the game is etc...etc...
But for the moment, I'm sorry to say that from MY perspective 2018 is really bad and it's not Nintendo Labo, Go Vacation or Kirby that will make me change my point of view.
I want Nintendo to succeed, I want them to return at the place they were, meaning on the top of the gaming mountain, not inside the sewers... Nintendo means great, means gameplay, means joy to play... not laziness and emptiness.
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