It doesn’t come as much of a surprise that Pokemon has sold such a massive amount of units on the Nintendo Switch, considering how die-hard the Pokemon community is. Some of the releases on Nintendo Switch have been a bit rockier than others, but overall, they still perform incredibly well. In Nintendo’s latest earnings announcement, it’s been confirmed that more than 99 million Pokemon games have been sold for the Nintendo Switch alone. Considering that Nintendo has been struggling a fair bit this year, this seems like a significant milestone and achievement to hit amidst the lull in record-breaking releases.
The Nintendo Switch launched in 2017 and is still going relatively strong despite the hardware’s beginning to age. At this time, we’ve seen the Nintendo Switch Lite and the Nintendo Switch OLED be released, with a successor to the Nintendo Switch being announced in the past year. More details of this successor are meant to be announced within this fiscal year, but it seems to be slipping away quickly, with minimal further information coming out. However, it was announced that the successor of the Nintendo Switch will be backward compatible, which is a huge relief to many.
Since the release of the Nintendo Switch, plenty of games within the Pokemon universe have been released, such as Pokemon Let’s Go, Pokemon Sword and Shield, and even some of the older titles like the original Pokemon Snap being available with the use of the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack. Their most recent title, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet seems to have been the rockiest one so far, as the graphics weren’t what fans were hoping for, and even today, the game is heavily riddled with bugs in both solo and co-op play.
Pokemon Legends: Arceus did incredibly well despite the drastic changes they took when creating this game. You could go out and throw Poke balls at Pokemon without battling, and there were ‘boss’ fights to participate in, as well as side quests. It felt more like an RPG than a creature collector or pet battler game. The next Pokemon game is due to release in 2025, and is another Pokemon Legends game. The title is called Pokemon Legends: Z-A, taking players back to the Kalos region.
When it comes to franchises performing well on the Nintendo Switch, both Pokemon and The Legend of Zelda are highly successful, with the Zelda franchise selling over 53 million units on Switch. Despite that, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe remains the best-selling Switch game of all time, with more than 64 million copies sold.
