Here’s The Truly Impressive Thing About ‘Pokémon Sword’ And Shield’s First Weekend Sales

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Pokemon Sword and Shield

Credit: Game Freak

That a Pokémon game beat out Jedi: Fallen Order in both of their opening weekends shouldn’t be a massive shock. Star Wars is a massive draw, no doubt, but there’s simply no underestimating the power of a new Pokémon title, particular in the post-Pokémon GO era, as well as the Nintendo Switch era. But if you look a bit closer at UK sales numbers (not global, obviously, but often used as a benchmark for sales), you’ll notice something even more impressive. It isn’t only that Pokémon Sword and Shield outsold Jedi: Fallen Order. It’s that Pokémon Sword, on its own, nabbed the number one UK sales spot. That’s a whole thing.

Pokémon games always release in pairs: in this case that’s Pokémon Sword and Shield, two mostly similar games but two different retail products, counted separately. Pokémon Shield came in at n0. 3 on the UK charts and the dual packâ€"a set of both games for hardcore fansâ€"came in at no. 7. As gamesindustry.biz notes, Pokémon Sword is the third biggest boxed launch of the year, coming in behind perennial sellers FIFA and Call of Duty: and it managed to do that while only being on Nintendo Switch and while splitting its sales with Shield.

Again, these are not global sales, and it’s possible that UK sales saw a bump because the new games are set in a stand-in for the UK. I doubt that made a huge impact, however.

It’s a huge showing for a game that saw no shortage of controversy before launch, with a minor revolt from hardcore fans over the fact that certain Pokémon would not be usable in the game, a shift from all past entrances in the series. Gamesindustry.biz also notes, however, that the games still didn’t exceed Pokémon Sun and Moon, which came out during the height of Pokémon GO maniaâ€"though the rise in digital downloads and particularities in the way UK sales are counted make that data a little harder to parse.

There were some that worried that this might be an off-year for Nintendo, without some of the heavy-hitting franchises that boosted sales in years past. But this year is really showing off the power of Nintendo’s Switch strategy: for decades the company has built out franchises on both living room consoles and handheld consoles, all of which now live on the Switch. It ensures that the Switch is almost never short on big new releases, which we can see in full force with Pokémon Sword and Shield: typically a handheld-first franchise, Pokémon is now boosting living room sales for the first time.