If they released Animal Crossing in December they would kill it on hardware numbers. Now looking at their strategy they have been weak first part of the year recently so keeping it for March release might actually have been best. Plus they better refine the shit out of the game and damn thing better be perfect once released now entering into half cycle of Duke Nukem Forever development time period.

There’s a release window gap in March.

Personally speaking, I’m not buying Pokémon or Luigis Mountain. I don’t care much for those franchises. So I’d have preferred it, personally, in the holiday season. But I also know by my friends list anecdotally that there’s a ton of Pokémon fan/Animal Crossing fan crossover.

Having AC to them there is good business strategy. It also lets them focus marketing heavily on Animal Crossing in a slot of the calendar that would otherwise be empty.

My point is simple: Fire Emblem has 40% digital sales, I believe the increase in digital percentage is a tendency. Because of Switch nature and vouchers programs.

They give sell through percentage

There's a lot of qualifiers on both the negative and positive sides tbh.

On the one hand, the "Switch factor", where so many other games sold well above the norm for their series, doesn't seem to have applied with Pokemon.

On the other, both the hardware and software cost are higher than for any previous entry, and Famitsu's figure is ultimately a very incomplete picture of actual total sales. 

Will be interesting to see if the doubling of Let's Go is a trend that holds true worldwide.

The "Switch factor" is more of a global thing rather than Japan.

Yoshi, Kirby, Fire Emblem, Luigi's Mansion, Pokemon have all performed below 3DS entries.

In Japan, right? That would make sense as 3DS sold faster than Switch in Japan despite the opposite being true globally.

Yes, it's been games with more of a home console history (3D Zelda, Smash, 3D Mario, Splatoon, Xenoblade) that have shown big improvements in Japan.

Does any one know the following:

Do double pack count as 1 or 2 sales?

For smash and let’s go did the special edition Consoles release the same time or earlier like the switch light Pokémon special edition?

Previous first week sales of pokemon games, I saw someone posted them, is first week all the same amount of days or are some shorter/longer?

Double pack counts as 2 sales

Smash & Let's Go bundles released the same day as Let's Go

I'm not sure how many days for each previous title