After 25 years, the Pokemon franchise is showing no signs of slowing down. Original fans and newcomers alike are ready to catch ’em all, and Nintendo is ready to catch all of those dollars. Today, the company revealed that almost 35 million Pokemon games were sold in the last financial year alone. In fact, three of the best-selling first-party Switch titles are Pokemon games, which should come as no surprise.
Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl were the highest-selling Nintendo games of the fiscal year 2022 and are now the highest-selling Pokemon remakes ever. The games sold 14.65 million units following their release in November to the end of March.
The semi-open-world title Pokemon Legends: Arceus, released in January, managed to sell 12.64 million units in only two months. This makes the game the second-best-selling Nintendo Switch title of the fiscal year 2022.
The first core series in the franchise to release on Nintendo Switch in 2019, Pokemon Sword and Shield managed to sell another 3.18 million copies, bringing total sales to 24.27 million. Let’s Go Eevee and Let’s Go Pikachu, released in 2018, sold another 1.25 million copies, bringing the total to 14.53.
After calculating the sales of New Pokemon Snap–totaling 2.40 million–the final number of Pokemon games in the last year amounts to 34.12 million.
In January, Nintendo announced another main entry in the franchise. Pokemon Violet and Pokemon Scarlet are scheduled to release later this year, with Nintendo giving a brief statement in February as to why the promotion for the games has been so quiet.
“We wish to be sensitive to major world events happening at this time and those impacted. A pre-scheduled Pokemon Presents was unable to be postponed. Out of respect to our global audiences, we decided to significantly reduce the promotion of the event while giving the fans to option to tune in if they chose to do so,” the company said in a press statement.
