Look at the Supplementary info section on Nintendo's IR page, it breaks down shipments between Japan & overseas.

1.36m + 16.8% is 1.59m not 2.18m.

If 16.8% IS the number:

Physical Sales - 1.36m
Digital Sales -  0.27m

Total Sales - 1.63m

Why argue when no-one knows the digital attach rate. Thats why this site is pretty much irrelevant now and has hardly any traffic. We just dont know numbers until they give them to us in quarterlys.

Pokemon has been on decline in Japan for a while. Lifetime sales in Japan are basically in release order.

Red/Blue - 7.94m
Gold/Silver - 6.09m
Sapphire/Ruby - 5.34m
Diamond/Pearl - 5.83m
Black/White - 5.49m
X/Y - 4.56m
Sun/Moon - 3.92m

Each generation has sold less than the last, the only exception being Sapphire/Ruby which may be more down to the hardware than the popularity of the games. GBA being short lived and DS being a juggernaut.

Globally the game should fair much better in comparison to previous titles.

Your maths is off :P I don't have a calculator but adding 16.8% of 1.3m won't give you 2.18m.

Damn, decimal was in the wrong spot for my calculation lmao.  That's what I get for trying to post and work at the same time.  🤣

In that case I think Sun/Moon levels are realistic enough when other unknowns are revealed, but not much higher than that.  It will be interesting to see how the legs are for these games.

Ahhh, it's literally the next page down from the one I was posting. xD

The problem with these numbers though is that shipped may be quite a bit higher than sold-through, especially for the recent tiles. Famitsu says 250,272 physical sold for fire emblem for end of september. Nintendo say 480k Shipped+Digital.

We have no way of knowing how many of the extra 230k are copies that were sold digitally, or physical copies that have been shipped but not sold yet.

At least with Nintendo's actual digital ratio figures we don't have that problem.

Which older titles were on the voucher program? The older they are the less the difference between shipped/sold-through will matter, so they'll probably give a more accurate percentage.

Smash Bros Ultimate gives a digital ratio of just 11.4%, while the newer titles give ratio's of anywhere from 20-45% but that counts shipped copies as digital sales.

What? 

In Japan, you can approximated very accurate the total sales. Famistu and Dengenki bring total sales sold x shipped, percentage form. Likewise Fire Emblem.

Yes you can get sold-through from famitsu and shipped+digital from Nintendo... what's your point?

I love the arguments:

“Not as impressive as game X that sold half because the Switch install base is higher now.”

“Not as impressive as Game Y, which sold slightly more. And while Game Y is on a larger install base, that is not relevant.”

This confirmation bias is killing me! 😂

The sales are what they are. In most cases, the initial sales are not the greatest indicator as to what the final sales will be and there’s multiple factors that go into that. Topping the sales of Switch is an impressive number, but it’s not as impressive as past Pokemon games: yes, they did have a higher install base, that is part of their advantage. Writing off that advantage and trying to create some sort of handicap to artificially spin the numbers into something more impressive than they are (or less impressive in the case of some arguing in this thread) is a garbage argument.

Week 1 sales aren’t as relevant as total sales. Once we get into late January or February, we’ll have a better idea of how well this game is doing. Week 1 sales are irrelevant if the game sells better in the long run. So rather than arguing about hypothetical handicap adjustments, why not just compare what happened, and then later on compare what things are trending toward?