Huh? these are pre-orders. It hasn't gone on sale yet. And it's double the pre-order amount of Firered/Leafgreen, which went on to sell 4.2 million NA.

The actual day one sales numbers are gonna be much higher than just pre-orders.

This is going to be the best selling game of 2007 I will bet you anything, better selling than Halo and GTA IV and Super Mario (if it comes out). 

I really wanna get this game. Pokemons are just too addicting. Problem is, I just can't justify the cost for a DS when I have a PSP.... Oh well, I guess i'll just wait a couple of years.

For the record, I believe the 533k is "consumer to retailer" preorders - most games never get this far at all. Stores will have preordered 2-3m from Nintendo (at least).

In the world of handhelds, Pokemon Diamond is Halo. Pearl is GTA.

Good call stof *thumbs up*

I think FireRed and LeafGreen had less than half of this number of pre-orders, plus you hear everywhere that a lot of people who have DS's played Pokemon Red or Blue and haven't played a game since then.

Also, the US buying style is completely different to japan (whoever said the 3:1 first day thing) buyers will be buying this game MASSIVELY for the rest of the year with Christmas being even bigger...

Thinking about the future prospects for the DS I just can't picture how absolutely astronomically massive this year is going to be for DS, Wii and Nintendo.  

500,000 pre orders for a game that is typically not only just a hardcore gamers game but a very broad spectrum game for many many people is simply staggering and cannot be spun in a bad way at all.  I don't know if they will reflect well in the april numbers because it comes out so late in the month, but 1.5 mil is HIGHLY likely.

 Hahahahahahahahaha, wow, this post was funny!

Dude, where were you at the last 11 years? Pokémon is a phenomenon until nowadays! More than 140 million copies were sold if we count all the games of the franchise! Besides, it isn't just the sales that are excellent, the critics also like most of the games. Even Famitsu and IGN often give high grades to Poké games. What about the consumers? They are always satisfied! A lot of people (including me) play Pokémon since the end of the 90s and still like the games.

If you dont like something, there is no problem on that. The problem is when you make a negative comment  about something and it doesn't fit on reality - in other words, a sophism, a insensateness.

Pokémon isn't a novelty; maybe you could say that in 1996 (!), but the facts would quickly contradict you.

I think he was being sarcastic.

Fact:  Pokemon on handhelds=sales  

I think we can all agree on this. I remember playing the blue version long ago. All my friends used to play it during recess. I used to get fustrated because they used to battle and stopped playing suicide like we usually used to do. I got it a little after that then later I got the gold version.  Haven't played since then. Now that I remember it, it wasn't a bad game, still not going to get the ds versions though. Oh those pathetic memories of being happy for filling up the pokedex or cheating and duplicating items with missingo. Pre-orders sound high to me, but I don't think the pre-order numbers matter because we all know this is going to sell.