Pokemon continues to be a massive success. Earlier today, The Pokemon Company took to Twitter to announce that the series’ newest titles, Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Pokemon: Let’s Go, Eevee! have sold over 3 million units combined worldwide in the first week of the games’ release. With these kind of sales numbers, the Pokemon: Let’s Go duo are already the fifth best selling Nintendo Switch games. Along with this, the duo of games have the highest first week sales of any Nintendo Switch games released in the console’s short lifespan.
This news comes a day after Famitsu reported, via Gematsu, that the games sold 664,198 retail copies in Japan during their first three days on market. This number includes all retail versions of the games, but excludes how many games were bought digitally from the console itself. The report also stated that sales of the Nintendo Switch tripled during the week the Pokemon: Let’s Go games released to 180,585 units sold from the previous week’s 53,385 units sold.
Sales numbers like these show the strong popularity the Pokemon franchise has. Pokemon : Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Pokemon: Let’s Go, Eevee! are not typical mainline entries in the series. The duo of games are a more casual reimagining of the Game Boy classic Pokemon Yellow. The games also integrate mechanics from the highly successful mobile entry, Pokemon GO. Due to these points, the Let’s Go games were designed as an easier entry point for the mobile game players to experience a console version of Pokemon rather than a mainline core RPG entry would be.
The success of Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Pokemon: Let’s Go, Eevee! bodes well for the already announced core RPG entry in the series set for release next year. This success for this new type of Pokemon game also serves as great send off for long time series director Junichi Masuda, who is likely to step down from the position after these titles.