When it comes to long-running franchises in the video game world, the “goal” is simple: sell as good or better than the last entry. Admittedly, that seems like a low goalpost to pass through, but you’d be surprised how hard that can be sometimes. Some franchises sell many millions in the course of weeks, while others can take months, and some struggle to get to one million units sold! When it came to Pikmin 4, many were curious about how the game would do. While the Nintendo Switch had brought all the previous console games to the system for people to get, that didn’t mean they would partake in the 4th entry.
Just as important, Pikmin 4 had been promised MANY years ago and was only now FINALLY coming out, so many wondered if that meant the game wouldn’t be good and they were just “throwing it out there” to help fill out a gap between games with Link and Mario. The reason behind the delay was detailed recently and revealed to be a “staffing problem” more than anything else. Still, when that staff did get everything together to make the title, they tried to make the game better than ever and appeal to many people.
Thankfully, as revealed by the latest Nintendo financial data, as revealed by VGC, their efforts worked. Not only did they sell millions of units in their first two months of life, but they outsold every other title in the franchise!
More specifically, they sold about 2.61 million units by the end of September. That’s pretty impressive, given the series’ past sales and how some of the ports to the Switch had done in a similar amount of time. Just as important, almost 1 million sales came from Japan alone. The reason that’s surprising is that, being blunt, Japan couldn’t have cared less for the Pikmin, Olimar, and the franchise in the past, as they only bought a couple hundred thousand units per game at best! So they’ve already “bought-in” to this franchise more than all the other games combined!
So, what does this mean going forward? Well, after so many years and so many frustrations in trying to figure out why the games WEREN’T doing well, Nintendo can move forward with the franchise and have a good feeling that people will buy into it next time around.
Given where we are in the development cycle, the next game will be on Nintendo’s new system…
