Nintendo quarterly sales update (To June 30th 2021) Switch 89.04 m

[Kakadu18]

IcaroRibeiro said:

Pokemon (as a franchise) have the biggest push out of any game in the gaming industry. In the last few years:

- It has a massively popular animation series
- Had a live action movie that grossed almost half billion dollars
- It has one of the most (if not the most) popular mobile game
- Can move over 3 billion USD a years from merchandising alone (https://nintendowire.com/news/2019/08/12/the-pokemon-company-made-a-humble-3-billion-in-merchandise-sales-in-2018/)

The brand is just ubiquitous and its sales are really big but somehow legs behind the franchise perceived popularity. Launched on the hottest system in the market, one would expect mainline Pokemon series to be the most popular gaming franchise on Switch as it surely was on Nintendo handhelds, but Sword & Shield are just too mediocre to yields any major commotion inside console enthusiasts I guess...

If we look at Pokemon series sales progression, we can see how from Gen 3 to Gen 7 every mainline Pokemon entry moved from 15 to 18 million sales, regardless of the popularity of the system it was issued but also regardless in what part of the lifecycle of the system the game was released. This is unprecedented, no franchise can see such stability on its sales. Every game depends on how good are its reviews or world of mouth to keep selling, but Pokemon can safely brings 15 million sales just for existing

Most of Pokemon games have their legs cut off because of third versions issued 2 years after the original game release. SwSh having no third version will keep selling for more time, hence, in my opinion, the only fair comparison with most of Pokemon games can be done until the next quarter (where SwSh will probably end around 22.5 million)

While 22.5 million is without a doubt a nice improvement compared to the ~17 million average of the franchise it's quite an underwhelming increase in sales, in my opinion at least

But well, it's not like Game Freak give a damn about it. As long they can profit from merchan sales who cares for game sales?

I think that if Sw/Sh was better it would be already closing in on 30M. But even so, it's really big.