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Despite criticisms, the Pokémon machine continues to prove fruitful.
"Hello there and welcome back to GRTV News, I'm Alex, as always going through the afternoons latest and greatest when it comes to gaming, technology, entertainment, whatever you like and indeed whatever you love, we always have it here for you at GRTV News and in the wider Gamereactor network as a whole, so if you like what you see and you want to see more be sure to check out Gamereactor wherever you get it from for more gaming reviews, gaming previews, movie reviews, series reviews, exclusives, interviews, world news, sports news and of course so much more."
"Without further ado though today, we're talking Pokemon Legend ZA and how it sold nearly six million units in just under a week, or in its first week I suppose I should say, which is a pretty impressive figure.
Now Pokemon Legend ZA has launched to a fair bit of controversy I would say, similar to Pokemon Scarlet and Violet in many ways, Pokemon Legend ZA has been pointed out for a sort of lack of technical leap compared to previous games, people in this Nintendo Switch era have been very critical of Pokemon, not exactly living up to the visual standpoints that they had in their head but it seems that that doesn't matter because the internet bubble has been proven once more to just be a bubble by the fact that this game has sold 5.8 million units within its first week."
"So this comes from Pokemon itself who did sort of brag a little bit about selling 5.8 million units because you're probably bound to do that, a little under half of those units were sold on Nintendo Switch 2 as well, which is very impressive considering this is a Nintendo Switch 1 game with a Nintendo Switch 2 upgrade, allegedly, a lot of people say that the game doesn't run very well on the Switch 1, I've only played it on the Switch 2 so I cannot comment on that, however it again shows that the staying power of Pokemon is very much still here despite people critiquing certain aspects of this game."
"So when we look at these sales figures, how do they stack up against Pokemon's past?
Because Pokemon, in fairness, is one of the biggest franchises around the world, you'd expect this game to sell millions of copies, if it didn't we'd be in real dire straits if you're a Pokemon fan, however as we look at the sort of recent games we see that compared to X and Y, which is probably an interesting comparison even if it's a bit of an old one because X and Y is obviously where we were introduced to the Kalos region which is where the Legend ZA takes place, X and Y sold 4 million within its first week, Pokemon Sword and Shield sold 6 million within its first week and Legends Arceus sold 6.5 million."
"Obviously it's not outdoing Pokemon Scarlet and Violet which sold 10 million units in its first three days.
So compared to those recent Switch numbers, actually Pokemon Legends ZA has done a bit lower."
"Obviously it's still doing very well for any sort of game release, when we look at game releases now sometimes we consider games to have flopped even if they've not sold a million copies but a lot of them, if they sell anywhere near that amount, is usually a massive, massive success."
"So obviously it's done pretty well for Pokemon and if the budget reports are to be believed then it didn't cost them nearly as much to make as some other games did either.
So again it looks like a win for Pokemon but they might be looking at these figures to be fair, these sales figures and thinking could they have been a bit better and arguably they could have been if the praise was around the board for how this game handles technicality and things like that."
"Although at the same time, if you're Pokemon, do you really care about 0.2 million units?
Do you care about 0.7 million units?
Obviously you weren't going to make a mainline amount of units for this and you're probably looking towards Gen 10 and hoping that it reaches Scarlet and Violet numbers."
"I don't know.
Let me know what you think and I'll see you next week for some more GRTV news."
