http://www.gaming-age.com/news/2007/4/18-30

Pokemon Diamond and Pearl will release for the Nintendo DS this Sunday to retailers across the U.S. With just four days left to reserve (check your local retailers to see if they're still accepting preorders), Nintendo has announced that more than 533,000 copies of the game have been pre-ordered, more than twice the amount reserved when Pokemon Leaf Green and Fire Red were released a few years back. Those titles went on to sell more than 3.4 million copies. Based on that historical sales data, the huge success of the DS over the past year, and the massive amount of Pokemon Diamond and Pearl sold in Japan, Nintendo expects the two games to be among the top selling games for 2007 in the States. The official press release follows:

Pre-orders for the upcoming Pokemon Diamond and Pokemon Pearl video games for the portable Nintendo DS have topped one half million in the United States, and Nintendo is advising fans to brace themselves for the next wave of Poke-mania. Based on the huge pre-sales for Pokemon Diamond and Pokemon Pearl, Nintendo expects them to be among the top-selling games for all of 2007.

With four days to go until they arrive, more than 533,000 pre-orders have been taken for Pokemon Diamond and Pokemon Pearl. Already these games have more than doubled the pre-sale numbers of Pokemon FireRed and Pokemon LeafGreen, which launched in 2004. Pokemon FireRed and Pokemon LeafGreen went on to sell more than 3.4 million combined in North America.

Pokemon Diamond and Pokemon Pearl have consistently ranked among the top- selling video game products on Amazon.com, and there are still four days until launch. 

yeah just like the wii, pokemon is just a 1 year novelty

oh wait..

Kind of low figures atleast compared to pre-orders for uber-selling games. But of course, Pokemon is one of those games that people *casually* get.

 The BIG question: Over/Under 1.5m for April? It'll only have a scant few days on the NPD to do it in (compared to God of War 2's nearly full month).

Obviously it could garner near 1m in May NPD too.

I'd imagine it will sell well over the summer too when school is out. I wonder how many hardware units this title will sell.

I think Pokemon Diamond and Pearl will be the final transition from the GBA to the DS in the US. Right now the GBA is still selling over 100k in month, but for April I think you could see it drop bellow that mark and see a boost for the DS to over 500k in monthly sales. I expect the DS to just sell insane from now until the end of the year here in the Americas, and probably Europe as well. Pokemon will get those younger GBA owners and people who weren't interested in the DS for things like Brain Age and Nintendogs to finally move on to the DS. At the same time I think you'll see GBA sales start to plummet. For December 2007 I see something like 2.5 million DS's to 1.2 million PSPs to 300k GBAs sold (going by US sales only).

DS could put together a long string of 500K months... It will need to hit the mark in March based just on momentum, and then it should have no trouble reaching it in April and May with Pokemon out...

In Japan, its like 12 or 13 straight months with 500K units... If DS starts doing that in the other regions, it can become the best-selling hardware of all time...

Edit: VGChartz doesn't have handheld software numbers up for the period, but in 2003 when Ruby/Sapphire launched, GBA hardware went from 284K in Jan and to 320K in Feb, to 774K in March and 516K in April, bringing GBA's total to 15.6 million. DS hardware just hit 11 million, but did 575K in Feb.

Pokebomb? I don't think so. Pretty low number as for such blockbuster. Maybe non-gamers don't preorder games and the month sale will be much more impressive. We will see.

Seems pretty good to me. When is the last time the PSP had over 500k pre-orders in the US? Did you even read the text? It's double the numbers of Firered and Leafgreen, which wound up selling 3.4 million in NA. If that's a bomb, go ahead and light my fire!

This one gave me a good laugh

Seems as if the ds gets another hardware-moving game.

Looks like these just got a European release date of June 30. I wonder what the WW sales of this will be at the end of the year. I'm guessing about 12 million.

http://www.pokemonpalace.net/talkback/1176875449,47207,.html