The lifetime sales of a video game can help determine just how successful or unsuccessful a title is. For example, gamers rushed to get it if it sold millions in its first week or two. If it sold millions over its lifetime, it was more of an “evergreen” title that consistently did well. When you process the lifetime sales of an entire series of games, you can see whether the franchise has grown over the years or whether certain titles stand out from the rest. For example, the Pokemon Company dropped some updated numbers for their pocket monsters games, showing people still love the franchise.
As noted by the insider tweet below, the lifetime sales of Pokemon games have gone over 480 million units. That’s not just staggering. That’s a number that’s truly hard to comprehend. It’s true that most titles in the franchise do well, but to reach that number? It’s beyond impressive. Plus, as the tweet also states, Gen 9 is officially over 20 million units sold, which came out in November.
But that also means that another 20 million came from the other games in the franchise, specifically on the Switch and 3DS, more than likely, and that means that the franchise also continues to be an evergreen line that people will pick up when they get a new system.
Plus, you have to factor in that these numbers probably don’t account for the mobile games, as those are free to download. If we added those, they might be close to a billion in “game sales.”
So what does this tell us? First, it means that for over 25 years, fans have been more than happy to “catch’em all,” no matter the generation or spinoff title. They desire nothing more than to see what The Pokemon Company is cooking next and are always eager to try a new game.
As a result, the company will likely have no problems continuing to make spinoffs and mainline games for as long as it can profit from them. However, while that does sound great, there is a caveat here.
The caveat is that while Gen 9 was a huge success, it also exposed how The Pokemon Company is willing to rush out a product to capitalize on profits. They’re still fixing the bugs from the last mainline games, and fans demand that they don’t pull that kind of crap again.
We’ll have to see if they listen.
