Pokemon Legends: Arceus sold 1.4 million units in Japan in its first weekend
In Japan alone, Pokemon Legends: Arceus put up an incredible weekend of sales, and that's not including the high praise it's received worldwide.
Pokemon Legends: Arceus is an extremely interesting turning point for the series. Breaking off from the usual routine of the mainline games, players have been enjoying exploring an open world of Pokemon exploration, collection, and battles. How much? Well, in Japan alone, Pokemon Legends: Arceus reportedly put up sales of over 1.4 million units in its opening weekend.
The number of unit sales on Pokemon Legends: Arceus in Japan comes from a report at Famitsu, as well as game analyst David Gibson. Reportedly, in just its first weekend, Pokemon Legends: Arceus had moved over 1.425 million units in Japan alone, making for one of the fastest-selling Pokemon titles around. In comparison, the previous Pokemon titles - Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl - have moved around 13.97 million units worldwide since their launch back in November 2021. Though those games were considered to be solid remakes of their mainline origins, Pokemon Legends: Arceus has been something altogether different and it shows among the high praise it has received from players and fans around the world.
Nintendo Switch JP data - “Pokémon LEGENDS Arceus”, has sold 1,425,000 copies, making it the 2nd best-selling Switch title of all time in its first week, behind “Animal Crossing”, which sold 1,881,000 copies. “Pokémon Brilliant Diamond Shining Pearl" sold 1,396,000 units.
— David Gibson (@gibbogame) February 3, 2022
The news of Pokemon Legends: Arceus’s successful opening weekend in Japan also comes alongside Nintendo’s reports of another solid quarter of business. According to Nintendo, the Switch has finally passed the extremely successful Wii in terms of lifetime console sales, making it to 103.54 million units sold against the Wii’s 101.63 million. This is no doubt with help from various different models such as the recently released Switch OLED model, but it’s still quite the milestone for the Switch. Only the original Nintendo DS still sits ahead of it in Nintendo’s hardware history with a little over 154 million units sold.
Either way, it would seem that Pokemon Legends: Arceus is proving to be an incredibly successful spinoff to the mainline series and it will be interesting to see if Game Freak applies its success elsewhere in the series. We certainly have some places we’d like to see the Pokemon franchise go after Legends. Stay tuned as we continue to follow for the latest updates on the series.
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replyTJ Denzer posted a new article, Pokemon Legends: Arceus sold 1.4 million units in Japan in its first weekend
