Pokemon sales usually dies once a sequel is released. This time we don't have a third version cannibalizing the standard version, so I'm expecting similar legs to XY
However the 4.3 million sold in its second calendar year comfortably outsold XY second year (2.3 million), even though sales dropped over 40% Q1 2021 vs Q1 2020 it's easy to understand, Q1 2020 was the quarter after launch so sales were still high, I'm expecting a much more smoothy decrease YoY for the next quarters. We can expect at least 2 million copies for 2021 and 1.5 million for 2022. 25 million is the absolute minimum for this game
With Arceus predicted to come out early next year my bet is a next mainline Pokemon gen is coming only by 2023. This can be enough to give Sword-Shield additional legs to reach something in the 26 million range
So my prediction is 26-27 million
Answering the other question: I haven't bashed the game before its release because even though Dexit sucks it could be easily solved with future updates
I bashed the game AFTER it was release and I finally played. Could tolerated it like I did with XY (meh game, but nice competitive) and SM (a bit better than XY, but worse competitive)
But this time both single player and competitive sucks. They fucked up with competitive with Gigantamax gimmicks. Overall not planning to get the next mainline Pokemon game. The fatigue just hit me hard. I'm willing to play their spin offs though, like Pokemon Snap
