Update: Nintendo of America says it sold six million worldwide during its first three days on sale!
The latest Pokemon titles for the Nintendo Switch have been resounding success for The Pokemon Company. The company announced today that Pokemon Sword & Shield have shifted a staggering six million copies worldwide during the games first week on sale. This means that Pokemon Sword & Shield have had the highest ever first week sales for a Nintendo Switch game. Two million of those sales were from Japan alone.
Well they’ve easily just made their money back given how, uh… not high budget the game looks.
Now use the revenue to work on next Pokemon title immediately and now they made their money bring a game with all Pokemon, all new animation, and moves and make the graphics up to Mario Odyssey . But we know they just going to take a 3 year break period for no reason.
You are delusional, all that money will go to the pockets of all the greedy stockholders and corporate mans handling the company.
Still no excuse why after seeing high sells off a new game why they didn’t immediately start a sequel and we know they can after all BOTW2 supposed to be out next year. That will be 3 years from BOTW 1. See how working immediately closed the gap of years from BOTW and BOTW2? Only 3 years. Now count the years from Luigi’s Mansion 2 to Luigi’s Mansion 3? Much further in years. Why? Because they didn’t work on Luigi’s Mansion 3 immediately after Luigi’s Mansion 2. Yet they worked on BOTW 2 immediately. So a hard core graphical BOTW game gap can be as close as 3 years if they immediately start. So what exactly do developers do after they release a game? Not a darn thing. And why haven’t Ubisoft after seeing the success of Mario-Rabbids, immediately start on Mario Rabbids 2? Yet they can immediately make Let’s Dance every year.
I dont have the game but I read that the EXP share is automatic now. But that makes it too easy. Anyone playing it challenged or is it easier than previous Pokemon tittles. I’m asking because I want to know if this game is worth $60 before I head out and get it
I wasn’t very happy to hear about exp share being always on either. However, it’s not a equal split among everyone. Pokemon you use in fights get the majority of exp, and lower level Pokemon get more than higher levels. A simple example would be
Active Pokemon – 25 XP
Higher level Pokemon on team – 15 XP
Lower level Pokemon on team – 20 XP
So you can still have a few that are way more powerful than others if you’d like, as long as you use them frequently like in other games.
I’ve just started my playthrough but the game is rather easy so far. I’m afraid it’ll stay this way… :P
However while I’d love a challenge, I completely disagree it has anything to do with exp share. I’ve never used it until now and recent games were easy nonetheless. The games could’ve been balanced to be challenging with or without exp share, but they are not. Instead theuly are obviously tuned and designed to be easy.
I’m still having fun with Shield so far, tough :).
This game allows you to access the PC boxes from just about anywhere like Let’s Go did. The way I play to keep the game challenging is by playing with 3 separate teams. I let the pokemon in one team level up once then I switch to my next team. Then again to the third team. I don’t really grind much either. By doing this and raising 18 pokemon at once, I’ve been able to consistently keep myself 3-5 levels lower than most of the trainers and wild Pokemon. By staying under leveled like this, I’ve been able to keep the game consistently challenging. Also, I end up with several alts to use when challenging gyms and whatnot. I’ve also got a 4th team I level up on the side specifically designed for catching wild pokemon.
One other thing to note about the way I play by raising 3-4 teams at once is that my levels continuously fall further and further behind the opponents. I did this as well in Sun/Moon and Let’s Go, and by the end of the game, I was 20 levels behind the endgame opponents which obviously made me pull out all the stops to win.
Some people call me crazy for playing Pokemon like this, but I find it thrilling to have to actually try to win by being severely handicapped in levels.
Brian, that’s brilliant :). I shall try it too! This is also a good idea because it’s hard to choose just six mons to have in a team…
Glad you like the idea, c2h5oc2h5! I hope you have fun playing that way! And if you want the game to be even more challenging, think of adding another team beyond the three to be an extra tier challenge. So if having 3 teams is hard mode, then a fourth might be very hard and so on. Let me know how it works out for you!
Also, you get to go through the main game with many more ‘Mons than you would otherwise and evolving them along the way which saves on the post-game grind. That’s if completing the ‘Dex appeals to you.
XP share is automatic, but they have scaled both enemy teams and xp per fight to compensate. I actually had to fight a gym leader twice this playthrough, and ended up spamming revives against the League Champ, something I haven’t done since GameBoy was a brand.
The game has lots of reasons not to be excited for it, but they actually did the balancing better than the 3DS games.
Now they’ll never learn their lesson!
At least I won’t be paying for MY copy (assuming I ever play this at all).
Ok
It was inevitable they would sell a lot of copies, the franchise is just too big for Gamefreak to be forced to change their policy. They will continue to lie and cheat and too many people will turn a blind eye or not see an issue at all.
This is why we NEED hackers to practically BREAK the Switch, just to right all of Nintendo’s wrongs.
It’s 2015 all over again….
I wouldn’t blame Nintendo for this, this is more of the fault of TPCi and Gamefreak. I’m not really sure if Nintendo actually gets involved with the games beyond publishing them.
Nintendo is the reason why too many people can’t hack their systems.
Well hacking is okay if you are going to do something like mods, but with the majority of hackers just downloading free games I can see why they do that.
As far as pricing goes compared to the actual product, Gamefreak dug their own grave and Nintendo called it a finished product. How people go about obtaining this game is by their own mileage (for better or worse).
In short, I don’t condone piracy, but I don’t oppose it either.
So I finished up the Pokemon Champ yesterday, after being first in line to complain about the problems with the game. I got it because my 5 year old son lives and breaths Pokemon, and had decided on Grooky for a starter months ago.
The good. The wild area adds tons, and tons, and tons of optional content from very early on in the game. By the time you get to route 2, you’ll have access to dozens upon dozens upon dozens of pokemon, max raid battles which drop all kinds of goodies including TM’s, and you get access to your breeder very early as well. They’ve also done a great job of scaling enemy team strength, as the gym leaders have a tendency to backdoor a subtyping in the last pokemon in their team, the one they dynamax, that counters at least some of the obvious counters you might have brought with you.
The bad. The story is more or less non-existent. Nothing happens until after you beat every gym *and* clear the league up to the final fight, then the game drastically diverts to shoehorn in a story with the obligatory title Legendaries. There are no “dungeons” the way there used to be. Routes are straight lines and the single storyline “bad guy” zone is just an elevator ride that gets interrupted for trainer battles. I don’t have a strong sense if this is true for fans of other strategies and types, but as a Normal type fan, the Dex cut has completely gutted my options. There are almost no new Normal types, and all the good ones from previous gens are not in Sword and Shield. Even things like Farfetch’d got reclassified away from Normal. So for me at least, I was forced into more generic, less personalized strategies directly due to the dex cut, which is not fun. Internet functionality is extremely spotty. Very hard to get anyone to join for Max Raid battles. Graphics are more or less upscaled 3DS graphics which you probably already know.
The most memorable part of my own play experience was probably my character names and pokemon nicknames. I let my son pick the names. He named my character “Daddy”. He nicknamed our starting Grooky his own name. This leads to some accidentally hilarious dialog.
“Come here Daddy, I have a surprise to show you….”
Of course it was still gonna sell. It’s Pokemon. Same goes for Star Wars. Even Solo managed to at least make it’s production costs back.
Not its marketing costs……