Scarlet & Violet Are Now The Third Best-Selling Pokémon Games Of All Time

And still in progress.
They can surpass Sword/Shield.

Insert standard "yes, but what about the performance issues" statement here.

The Switch truly does wonders for any franchise it touches. Like yeah, Pokémon was already a behemoth in software sales, but it definitely benefitted from the Switch's success as well.

I honestly wonder if the Switch's successor will do nearly as well, especially if there isn't another global lockdown which absolutely motivated people into buying a Nintendo system who may not have otherwise.

I thoroughly enjoyed Pokemon violet quite a lot honestly one of my favorites
👍😊

@Thief I think that's exactly why it won't sell as many; the lockdown really brought it a big second wind! Beyond that, though, Nintendo's 'second pass' at a hardware concept usually doesn't sell as well as the first, and I feel reasonably confident that the successor supposedly coming this year will be basically a more powerful Switch in the same way the 3DS and Wii U iterated on their predecessors.

These games do have problems and I've come across plenty of them while playing them but I feel they are somewhat overblown in severity vs my actual enjoyment playing it.

That said I feel the franchise deserves more care and polish and frankly talent than gamefreak can ever provide.

Thoroughly undeserved.

At least it’s good to see Arceus sold so well from just one version.

It's a shame. Those games don't deserve a million in sales.

I think they still have a chance at overtaking Sword and Shield too in a year or so, but we'll see. I initially held off on buying this for about a year due to all the issues, but they're just such fun games, definitely better than Sword and Shield for me. Hopefully next time Game Freak can sort out the performance issues and add voice acting

Can't wait for the underwhelming remake of Black and White to sell 10 million copies!
Consumers really know how to make the developers put any effort into their product!

To bad there's no glitches to make your own Pokemon shiny like in Gold and Silver. ✨

Love that the top three includes the gens people complain most about, which are led by the one which bears a derogatory nickname for anyone who enjoys it most. Truly the best superfans.

Even I almost completed all 3 Pokedex, am still doing regularly 6 or 7 star Raids, by far my favourite thing to do.
My top 3 Poke generations would be 1,2 and 9.
But I loved Diamond too.

That is very disappointing. Such a lackluster game. I hope they finally make something the fans actually want with the next release. Arceus was amazing and was very close to that product.

This is why we can't have nice things.

I know second releases/"best" Pokemon versions historically don't do as well, which is a shame; some like Black/White 2 and ORAS deserve to be higher up in sales IMO.

I just bought the Scarlet + DLC bundle, but it'll be a bit before I get to it. I'm just now sinking my teeth into Pokemon Legends: Arceus.

Pokemon will still never reach the peak numbers of Gen 1. When you combine Yellow sales (Gen 1 DLC, let's be honest) with Red/Green/Blue, that's a staggering 46 million. I'm very curious what the DLC sales were for Sw/Sh & S/V. I assume they were a couple million but probably nowhere close to add up to the 46 million number.

It's official: they're absolutely never going to bring this franchise to the AAA level of quality it warrants.

I still did enjoy my time with these games despite their problems.

That being said, I'm going to be very critical of whatever game they have to show us next.

Ah yes i imagine the numbers are higher because people can't play palworld they can play the next best thing 😺

Gen 10 is going to be a PowerPoint presentation for $70 and it will sell 30M copies.
Trust me my sloth works at GameFreak.

Consumers really love buying mediocre products 🤷🏻‍♂️

unbelievable this broken/buggy sold so well

I think for more than a few people, these games are the straw that broke the camel's back. From here on out, I'll only pick up mainline Pokemon games after the general reception becomes clear, and only if it's positive. Spinoffs are a different story...which is really depressing, honestly. Spinoffs shouldn't completely outshine the main games they're based on.

It says a lot about the state of this series that no one wants to see Black and White remade now, when years ago it would've been clamored for as much as the Sinnoh remakes. A barebones remake would at least be less glaring for games that never had an improved third version, but it'd still be yet another letdown.

Couldn't force myself to do the post-game or anything else after beating Violet. It's so sad seeing Emerald & Platinum near the bottom because they'll never get proper remakes.

@PikaPhantom This. I'm taking a long break from the main games, but if they make a new PMD or Pokken etc. I'd eagerly give it a chance. In the meantime though, I'm gonna go back to RPGs I either skipped or wanna replay.

@MK73DS Slakoth ?

Performance wasn't even my biggest issues, the games had other non performance problems I disliked even more.

The story was fun, the post game was so good it kind of annoyed me why the whole game wasn't that great.

Anyhow no matter ones opinions, these high sale number have a really dark side to them, they give Nintendo, PKMN Co and Gamefreak a signal that the games sell anyhow no matter their state and amount of content in them.

That is above everything the real issue.

Gold/Silver and their Gen 4 remakes are still #1 to me.

Still gotta get scarlet but I am still working on sword so it’s gonna be awhile.

@Rayquaza2510,

You are talking about opinions, but seem to only take your own subjective views into account.

Who is to say there is a dark side to these games selling well, the vast majority are enjoying them, as they look for positives and fun in games, rather then the core minority "Hobby gamers", who look for reasons not to like games, and spend far too much time playing games and discussing them on the intrenet.

The main audience for these games simply do not see this, or are even aware that people are having issues in the first place.

That's just hilarious.

@Rayquaza2510 one hundred percent correct. They'd rather just pump these out as fast as they possibly can with zero quality control, because they'll sell like crazy no matter what. I mean, you see the comments from fans on here.

The Pokémon Company should be happy to know that if they release something worse next time, fans will buy it and defend it even though it runs worse with each update.

I didn't really enjoy Scarlet even without the performance issues. The open world felt very bland at times, didn't enjoy the story and for me most of the gym leaders were irritating. The tera raid battles could be a bit of a mess sometimes too. Legends Arceus on the other hand is one of my favourite Switch games.

I loved Scarlet, and I'm still playing through the DLC. Between S/V's open world and Legends' immersive combat/catching, I've honestly never been more excited for the future of Pokemon. I'm absolutely excited for Pokemon on Switch 2, and I'm crossing my fingers for a gorgeous Legends Celebi or X/Y remake with Switch 2 capabilities.

@highscore Between the games and the media, like the official tv show and the special animations like Paldean Winds and Twilight Wings, Pokemon genuinely is in a great place, and it's nice to hear an agreement from a like-minded individual for once! 😊

@highscore Hahah yeah, Paldean Winds is amazing! I think there are four episodes in all, and they're spread out around various Youtube uploads, so just keep scrolling through until you get to all four!

And as far as favorite Pokemon go, even though I really love a whole lot of Paldean Pokemon I'd have to say one of my favorite designs is Tatsugiri, just so cute with lots of variations as well as a unique double battles mechanic 🤓

edit: just in case you missed these, I thought I would link a couple of great videos Pokemon uploaded, which I thought you might appreciate!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0isr5JDMW8
(this one is the first of three, so look for similar appearing thumbnails with 2 and 3 in the title even if you can't read katakana)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnDxXwdRvJQ
(this video really hit the nostalgia center even though the game only came out a year ago! I just LOVE S/V's soundtrack)