The Pokémon Hype Isn’t Dying Down Anytime Soon
Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl took the gaming industry by storm when they were released last month. The Switch-exclusive titles did a lot of things right and a lot of things wrong in the eyes of Pokémon fans. One thing it did do well regardless of fans’ opinions was sell lots of copies.
Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl sold over six million copies after only being on the market for one week. This is quite an impressive number for such a polarizing game.
During that entire week of sales, the games had not been patched once. It’s fairly well known at this point that Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl were incredibly buggy at launch. Even today, about three weeks after the games’ launch, most of the bugs are still present. Despite the mixed reviews and despite the lack of polish, the games still outsold their competitors.
Famitsu’s game sale estimations chart showed that the Pokémon games collectively beat out all of their competition in sales during the week the games were released. For Japanese sales only, they had sold roughly 1.4 million copies. It’s worth noting that the games were only out for three days of that week. Not only were they only out for 3 days, but they also more than doubled the sales of the game in second place.
With Pokémon: Legends Arceus coming out next month, it seems this likely won’t be the end of the Pokémon hype train. Hopefully, for Game Freak’s and Nintendo’s sake, the hype will only get stronger from here.
Are Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl worth the hype? Do you think the hype will last until Legends Arceus comes out? Let us know what you think in the comments below.