Are you ready to get Pokemon Scarlet and Violet tomorrow? If you are, you’re among the millions who are just as eager. The games have been hyped up for months since their announcement earlier in 2022, and thanks to all the trailers and insights into the titles, fans want to get their hands on the games themselves. But that raises the question, how well will Gen 9 sell when it comes to Switch tomorrow? Well, according to the COO of The Pokemon Company, we’re likely to have a potentially best-ever launch for the series. Why? Because the pre-order numbers are through the roof!
Takato Utsunomiya, COO of The Pokémon Company, was at a special event for the launch of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet and noted that the pre-orders for the series were the highest in history. There is some debate as to whether he meant the Japanese pre-orders for the game or the worldwide market. But even if it’s only for Japan, that’s a good indication that the titles will sell well overall. Let’s not forget that when Splatoon 3 came out, Japan led the world in buying the game. It is currently the best-selling game in Japan for 2022 and had the biggest software launch in Japan’s gaming history!
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are arguably more significant than that game, so you’d expect greater sales than it. Plus, while it is Gen 9, Poke-Fever has not broken in the slightest around the world. For example, a major event happened in the anime recently, with fans talking about what might come next. So they may get the video games to try and “feed their obsession” with the franchise even more.
The question now is, will it perform better than previous mainline titles? That is hard to say. You could argue that Gen 9 has more hype than Gen 8 or Pokemon Legends Arceus. Both did incredibly when they launched on Switch over the past few years. But we won’t know for sure until the game has been out for about a week.
The only “downer” on all this hype is the reviews for the game. While the score for Gen 9 is favorable enough, many have cited that the game has performance issues and can’t fully capitalize on the open-world aesthetic that it created for itself.
Whether that affects fans buying the titles remains to be seen, but it won’t take long to find out the truth.
Source: OriCon