Predict the lifetimes sales of Pokémon Legends Z-A

[firebush03]

curl-6 said:

Otter said:

https://x.com/Chris_Dring/status/1979992388580913472

Thank God people have eyes. 41% lower than Archeus in physical in the UK. S2 is 51% of launch sales.

It just doesn't look as appealing. Its still likely to benefit as the main "holiday" title so it may have better legs in that market.

Part of the differential will be that physical makes up a smaller portion of game sales now than it did when Arceus came out nearly 4 years ago.

Hopefully we get numbers from Nintendo before their Q3 report in February.

Also worth noting is that this decline is nearly identical to that of GoY. Some are saying this is a reflection more of a plight of consumers from physical to digital, but I still find this a little difficult to believe. My best guess as to what happened here is that bigger launches correspond with bigger consumer excitement: Whereas Arceus was hotly anticipated, Legends Z-A had a less-than-pleasant reveal-to-release cycle. Not nearly as bad as other Switch Pokémon games, but definitely not as clean as Arceus.

In any case, Arceus did not have a holiday season of sales & gen nine was revealed within weeks of launch; meanwhile, Z-A has a full holiday season + NS2 bundle to benefit from, in addition to gen ten not being revealed at least until February 2026 (so it’ll have a few extra months over Z-A.) In all, I continue to believe Z-A will outperform Arceus though may not by as muxh as originally thought.