Pokémon Sword and Shield have set a new record for sales in the franchise over the last 20 years. Nintendo has just released a new set of sales figures for the games that shows the Switch game as the best-selling title for the Pokémon franchise in the 2000’s. It’s pretty nuts to think about, but numbers don’t lie.
The two newest titles have landed in the top three in terms of sales across all generations. Since the release of the games last November, the games have hit a new milestone of 18.22 million copies sold. And that puts it just behind both the original Gen 1 games and the incredibly popular Gold/Silver games. The Pokémon Sword and Shield sales are just ahead of the 17.67 million units sold for Diamond and Pearl.
There are four generations of Pokémon games around that mark, here are the sales number from Nintendo of the four best-selling titles:
- Red/Green/Blue (1996) – 31.38M units
- Gold/Silver (1999) – 23.1M units
- Sword/Shield (2019) – 18.22M units
- Diamond/Pearl (2006) – 17.67M units
Nintendo will likely continue to rack up sales on the latest titles as well. Given the increased focus on DLC with the successful Isle of Armor launch, there’s probably going to be even more. The Switch console itself also continues to push more and more sales. The console has just surpassed the 61 million units sold milestone.
And sure, fans have not always been charitable with some of the corner-cutting Game Freak has done with Pokémon Sword and Shield, but the games have still sold very well. So as time passes, we can only expect that number to increase. And with more games on the horizon, Nintendo isn’t slowing things down anytime soon.
