Everyone loves good tales about good sales numbers. It’s one of those primal things where we can look at solid numbers and know how good something did, or how bad something did. But in this case, we’re talking about two Nintendo Switch games that did incredibly at launch. In fact, they set records in Japan and worldwide when they came out. We’re talking about Pokemon Scarlet and Violet and Splatoon 3. When the latter came out, it was the biggest Switch launch in Japan’s history, which was five years deep at that point. As for the former, it became the best launch Nintendo ever had as a company!
So, if not obvious, they both made Nintendo a lot of money this year, which they’re undoubtedly thankful for. But sales numbers don’t stop at launch. They continue on throughout the years, and when you get to where we are now, one has surpassed the other. Specifically, at retail in Japan, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet has passed Splatoon 3.
Is that a surprise? Not really, but the ink shooter title did impressive numbers that few expected when it came out. For whatever reason, Japan really loved the title, and they bought it in droves as a result. But when it comes to Gen 9, few things will top that. The game did 10 million at launch worldwide in its first three days! So even if you split that evenly among the top three regions for gaming, that’s a lot of units to move.
It should be noted that this number doesn’t include digital sales, only retail sales. That being said, we’d bet that Gen 9 comes out on top even with digital sales.
However, there is one metric where the “Kid Squid” comes out on top, player love. Don’t worry, we’ll explain. When both titles came out, they were big hits. We already told you that. However, regarding the quality of the title, Splatoon 3 did much better than Gen 9. It did have its problems, but that was via the internet, which can be explained in various ways.
In contrast, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet had numerous bugs, glitches, and issues that became so massive that gamers were making fun of it online by posting videos of all the problems they found! The Pokemon Company has promised to fix them, but who knows when that promise will come true.
So one game won in sales, and the other game won in quality.
Source: Twitter
