Pokemon Scarlet and Violet broke sales records in three days

The new Pokemon games outsold practically every other Nintendo game since the Switch launched

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet sales have shattered Nintendo’s previous record, the Redmond-based software developer announced in a press release, with the monster-catching RPGs selling over 10 million units in their first weekend. Nintendo said that makes the duo their fastest-selling games of all time, at least within the three-day time period.

Unlike most sales figures, these numbers actually include boxed sales and digital downloads. For reference, Nintendo announced earlier in 2022 that Pokemon Sword and Shield, the series’ previous installments, have sold 22 million in three years, and Pokemon Legends: Arceus, a spinoff that released in January 2022, sold 12 million in four months and 6 million in its first week.

Scarlet and Violet’s record-breaking sales come in spite of the games’ rather problematic performance issues, which were serious enough to prompt the technical analysis group Digital Foundry to call them a “comprehensive technical failure.” These range from cameras and characters clipping through objects to the game struggling to load assets when there’s too much movement.

What Nintendo plans for the games’ future, including whether Game Freak and The Pokemon Company will issue a patch that improves their performance, remains uncertain. Rather than publish a revised version of the previous games, Sword and Shield, as has been standard in the series’ past, Game Freak instead created two DLC expansions that added new areas and mechanics.

Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF