Board 8 > Pokemon Scarlet & Violet sell over 10 million in 3 days

(+) Yeah! (+)

Hahaha, it sure would be funny if there had been a previous topic with a very awkward typo in the title, good thing that didnt happen.

The highest selling Nintendo opening of all time, 4.05 million sold in Japan breaking Splatoon 3s record for biggest ever Japanese launch, and I believe the second biggest launch of all time after GTAV.

1000 million that's like a billion!

On one hand, glad to hear it. It's been a lot of fun.

On the other hand, hope this doesn't make TPC/Game Freaks content with releasing buggy games.

LightningStrikes posted...

I believe the second biggest launch of all time after GTAV.

Pretty sure multiple CoDs beat this as well as RDR2, but it's hard to tell with those since they only give $ numbers rather than sales... though I'm not sure if RDR2 had MTX at launch or not, and it was confirmed for 17 million copies in 2 weeks.

Nah this is almost certainly bigger than any CoD. With the fastest selling CoD doing a max of about 14 million in 10 days, in reality much lower because of special editions, regional pricing, and microtransactions you can say this is clearly ahead of that. Modern Warfare 3 had a bigger opening day Im sure but that was super frontloaded.

RDR2 is a bit more interesting, as it did not have microtransactions. It would be 12 million assuming a direct conversion from the US price, but the real number will be lower than that. Likely the two are comparable but well never know for sure.

I don't want a refund, but what a disaster.

And this is why GF can put so little effort into these games and not have to worry a thing. This is why it's so hard for them to really shake these games up

Also, I still want that goddamn Ice buff

barreldragon88 posted...

Also, I still want that goddamn Ice buff

Ice is super-effective against fire and water and also resists water.

You're welcome

It's great offensively, but defensively.....

I can't believe Pokemon still gets away with selling one game for the price of two, I wonder how many of these 10 mil were the same people buying both versions. Probs not a massive amount but it may be enough to make a dent on its 'all time record' standings.

andylt posted...

I can't believe Pokemon still gets away with selling one game for the price of two, I wonder how many of these 10 mil were the same people buying both versions. Probs not a massive amount but it may be enough to make a dent on its 'all time record' standings.

Honestly, the two version system likely allowed my brother and I to have our own games. It would have probably been difficult to convince my parents back then to buy the same game twice.

The two game selling model is still bonkers to me because realistically nothing is that vastly different between the two titles. I wonder if they will ever reach a point where that is no longer a thing.

andylt posted...

I can't believe Pokemon still gets away with selling one game for the price of two, I wonder how many of these 10 mil were the same people buying both versions. Probs not a massive amount but it may be enough to make a dent on its 'all time record' standings.

It's usually under 10%, I believe. And other games do stuff with DLC and digital special editions and whatnot, but yeah, it's a bit silly. At least we got Arceus as a single SKU.

Raka_Putra posted...

On one hand, glad to hear it. It's been a lot of fun.

On the other hand, hope this doesn't make TPC/Game Freaks content with releasing buggy games.

of course it will

When you can sell 10mil in 3 days, why do you need to care about releasing a buggy game

barreldragon88 posted...

When you can sell 10mil in 3 days, why do you need to care about releasing a buggy game

Ask CDPR why their stock dropped 75% after Cyberpunk sold 13 million in a week.

Buggy is one thing, Cyberpunk was literally unplayable for a lot of people.

I'll believe Pokemon suffers for a buggy game when I see it. The series is basically too big to fail at this point.

Nintendo and Pokmon just have different expectations

Like 85% of Pokemon revenue comes from merchandise. The games don't matter as long as they produce new Pokemon to market.

At least make those new pokemon have marketable designs.

With Sword and Shield the waifu trainers felt more marketable than the new mons.

Yeah, as soon as you realize Pokemon is a merchandise series rather than a video game series their business decisions make a lot more sense.

If making the games better would bring in more money, that's enough reason to do it. A company can pursue secondary sources of income even if they might be smaller than their primary source.

Plus having games more people love makes those people more likely to buy the merch.

Game Freak might not consider that worth the costs associated with taking longer to make games. Longer dev period = bigger development costs. They also have a consistent Anime/Game/Merch pipeline that has to sync up for everything to make sense, so even if they WANTED to delay the games, it isn't that simple.

Timelines can be extended the other way. They can hire more people and start projects earlier. This also creates more leeway when things go pear shaped. Like SV mostly crossed the finish line covered in duct tape. If things get worse, there may come a time when a delay is forced because the product just doesn't meet the absolute minimum to get shipped out.

Well yeah, but they're making money hand over fist and the fans don't actually care that much about the quality of the games (which is why they keep buying them), so from Game Freak's perspective they have every reason to cut corners and no reason to put in extra effort

It'll work until it doesn't!

I mean, most of what I've heard about these games is that they're super fun but are lacking from a technical standpoint. Personally, I'm not too bothered by some (frequently funny) visual glitches to the point I'd give up on the game completely. It's definitely a shame it came out so half-baked, but it's far from unplayable from what I've heard? Correct me if wrong.

The anime wasn't even the reason why they couldn't delay this. They aren't even wrapping up the current series for a few more weeks. Now that I think about it, it's kinda sad that the anime gets more leeway in that regard than the games.

Is the anime schedule really rigid enough to matter? It is highly episodic and can be padded out as long as needed. Ash has spent as much as 50 episodes between badges in the past. IIRC the XY arc ended mostly with a large string of filler episodes.

Well, they could've forced it to finish on time to start the SV arc at the same time the games released, but they gave it time for them to increase the animation quality for Ash vs Leon. Meanwhile, they forced the games out despite not being quite finished so they'd be out by Black Friday.

the fact is most of the bugs in s/v don't matter to its primary audience much tbh

I am waiting on s/v until I have more free time but I've been watching a few playthroughs and the gist I get is 'lol wow these graphics suck, but the game is really fun" so its like, neat.

The graphics sucking is one thing, but everything being more sluggish than usual, from battle actions to load times to navigating the menus, simply because the game runs really badly is enough to make fans unhappy even if they tolerate it.

Yeah, I'd say 30-40% of when I'm "playing" Violet is spent waiting. Either through menus or waiting for attacks / buffs, lag, etc

And that's NOT ok

Are the non-diehard customers supposed to be okay with a game that fell out of the early access tree and hit all the branches on the way down?

paperwarior posted...

Are the non-diehard customers supposed to be okay with a game that fell out of the early access tree and hit all the branches on the way down?

No, they're probably better off waiting for patches.

I've seen plenty of accounts from non-diehard people saying this is the first Pokemon they've played in awhile and are having a great time with it (despite the performance).

MacArrowny posted...

No, they're probably better off waiting for patches.

Has Game Freak ever patched a performance issue? I think they normally only fix game breaking stuff. I guess there can always be a first time.

Maybe they'll fix some of the things with the inevitable $40 DLC

They might expand the number of supported Pokemon like the Sword/Shield DLC did. Although, that was part of a free update that released at the same time so one didn't actually need to buy the DLC.

As a filthy casual I too can say that I'm having a great time with Pokemon SV (well, Violet specifically). Though I wouldn't say no to more frame rates!

I think that nonexistent QA aside, it's a pretty good Pokemon game, and the more extreme changes they made are mostly for the better.

I'm having a great time with the game, though I'd still prefer it to have had more development time. Good features are cut for no good reason and the world lacks depth.

Also this open world format likely means less replay value, but that's okay.

Bottle caps at level 50, love it

been doing a bunch of 6-star raids and it's a good way to get great mons. Really not much need to breed at all in this one.