Same goes for platinum. It’s obviously because they’re the third versions so most of the people who already had RS/DP didn’t want to spend another 40 bucks for essentially the same game. With that said, even if we’re just counting the first games of a generation, that would put Gen 5 as the worst generation despite it being very highly rated these days.
Pokémon players are just not very smart with their purchases.
Also consider that Emerald only sold half as many copies as Ruby/Sapphire, which are placed in the same category. The metric has 2 games vs 1 game, so emerald sold roughly as many copies as ONLY ruby and ONLY sapphire
Good point but there were probably more people that bought both than you would expect. Version exclusives are made for that exact purpose after all and they exist today, so it must work to some degree
5 was hated because there was no pre-gen 5 Pokemon and there was massive backlash at some of the regions designs. It's well received now because a) it's the most playable singleplayer experience, b) people have either softened up on the designs or have aged out of pokemon. Klingklang and Voltorb are equally stupid (in a way I don't mind) and if you think otherwise nostalgia has blinded you.
Black and White was caught in an uproar among the fans for not having any returning Pokémon until the end credits. I remember seeing people saying they were done with the series because of this and would not be returning. Fans of Generation I were particularly bitter about it.
The Pokémon games have been trying to correct this mistake since (and arguably have been overcorrecting, though it is pretty evident that some Generation I Pokémon sell games all by themselves, like Charizard, Mewtwo, Pikachu, and Eevee).
People also did not like the pivot towards Pokémon based on inanimate objects like the Vanillite line and the Litwick line, that there were what appeared to be counterparts to Pokémon found in previous generations (like Frillish to Tentacool), or, in some cases, the greater emphasis on story and its characters (there were a lot of people who played Pokémon games specifically because it was so plot-light compared to other JRPG series and didn’t like how Black and White were so dialogue heavy—the same fans would dislike Sun and Moon even more for the same reasons).
I guess it’s more so about the capabilities of the game engine and the ease of modding GBA games. The CFRU project has given us an easier entry point for more creators to get into GBA Pokémon modding.
GBC games are still very much like GBA games, but the GBA’s capabilities gives much more leeway to express creativity. You can see some very nice sprite works from GBA games.
DS games are more complex, they are now 2.5D (if I’m using the term correctly?). Lots and lots of room to work with but the faux 3D sprites are obviously requires much more work to make them look good and in line with the base DS game aesthetics.
Also the GBA games have way more memory space to work with. Hacking GBC if I want to add more than a couple pokemon/moves I have to delete other ones, there is very limited open memory to work with. GBA has plenty of room plus is just as easy to hack, so people have a lot more freedom.
You see this in other franchises too: the most advanced game that's still rooted in simple tile-based levels is usually the most suitable for rom hacking. You can do a lot more with Super Mario World than Mario 64 or Mario 3, striking the ideal balance of capability and simplicity, so that's where the community gathers.
Even Yellow technically. It fixed some of, but not all, of the AI issues, some improved spritework, fixed a fair number of movesets, and some trainers/gym leaders that were an absolute meme are much more difficult.
As somebody who dislikes Diamond/Pearl a lot... it was not hard to improve on that. Literally all Platinum had to do was speed up battles slightly and it would have been an improvement. And it does, and it still feels like absolute fucking molasses.
I imagine a lot of people just don’t get the “upgraded” version of the games for a given generation. Like if you already had Ruby or Sapphire, you might have thought Emerald was unnecessary. Same thing for BW2.
I’m sure plenty of people just get one game a generation.
Emerald has the most romhacks because it's the most recent game that's been fully decompiled, meaning it's much more accessible and you can do some crazy stuff with it. Not to mention of all the romhacks with custom sprite work, that's way harder to do on a DS game than a GBA game
Because buying a full priced game that’s nearly identical to the last installment aside from an hour or two of content isn’t high on anyone’s priority list
It came out in 2004, the DS was already primed to take over at that point. They called the DS the "third pillar" at the time but everybody knew that was horseshit, the GBA was mostly done by 2005 - the only games I really recall coming out at that point were Mega Man Battle Network titles and Mario Tennis GBA.
The short life of the GBA. It's remarkable it sold so many units because it released in late 2001 and the DS was shown off in May 2004 for a late 2004 release in Japan.
The initial wave of popularity for Pokemon was waning. Kids who grew up with it were losing interest. Personally I'm one of them, I was 8 years old when Pokemania hit worldwide in 1998, and by the time Ruby/Sapphire came out I was 12 and even though I was not as interested I still played the game... and I didn't like it. R/S is one of my least favorite Pokemon games with maybe the worst new additions to the Pokedex ever (just personal opinion there).
People understood better what the "3rd release" Pokemon games were. You can see in this graph how Crystal sold far fewer copies than G/S. Emerald actually sold slightly better. Most people weren't interested enough to buy what was nearly the same game again a couple years later, is the thing.
FR/LG came out the same year. So if you wanted a Pokemon fix, you might have already been satisfied with that.
Again just personal opinion here but: I was not a big fan of Gen 3, I liked FR/LG the best because I adore the original games, but still prefer the original over FR/LG. The reason the games are the most ROM hacked entries is NOT because they are the best -- it's because the GBA took way, way, way less horsepower to emulate than the Nintendo DS, and many people (myself included) prefer the look of the GBA games which are closer to the originals than the DS games which look the most janky with their first steps into 3D. The GBA is also just much easier to ROMhack for than the DS.
They have obviously never done another release in that style since 2004, everything has just moved forward since. So 20+ years later, Emerald is still the standard for "ROM hackable Pokemon game with simple sprite-based art that you want to be able to run on absolutely everything".
That's how strong Pokémania was back in the day. It's kinda like how Power Rangers is most well-known for its first incarnation, despite it going on for far longer than that.
Though, something tells me that if a mainline Pokémon game dropped on the Wii, that it would have outsold Gen 1.
I don't think so. The only Wii games that outsold Red + Blue + Green were pack-in titles (Wii Sports, Mario Kart Wii, Wii Sports Resort, New Super Mario Bros. Wii).
Of those 4 games, only Wii Sports outsold Red + Blue + Green + Yellow
I doubt it with the wii. I mean unless they're games were on par with everything else on the wii. But they were still making handheld games, which sold exceptionally well on the ds already.
You're forgetting how insane system sales for wii were. Just by nature of how many people would have access to a new Pokemon game, a real mainline wii game would have done insanely well.
It would do insanely well. But like another comment pointed out the only wii game to outsell original red and blue were pack in titles you would get with the console
Wii sales are misleading in a way. A ton of people bought it for wii sports and dance games and NOTHING else. I can see a mainline pokemon game on wii doing LGPE numbers but not much more.
It was insane, this was a time with no internet (or not so much) and games relied heavily on mouth to mouth propaganda. Even if one day the record will be broken, it still doesn‘t have the same effect as back in the day, since there are so many people now and hype is being pushed more by other influences.
Overall media is much more fragmented now. In 1996 you could buy commercial spots on Nickelodeon and Disney channel and boom you've advertised to most children in America. Imo it's actually harder to get widespread word of mouth stand out in the noise of the Internet these days.
What honestly impresses me more is that the global population of gamers is so much larger 30+ years later and in spite of that RBG still can't be topped.
Only thing that came close to "the world is enamored with the franchise" was when Pokémon Go kicked off. That had a slight feeling of what it was like back in the 90s.
There was plenty of Internet (for its time); one of the reasons Pokémon is/was so massive was because it was one of the first games to have a huge thriving online community as usage of the Internet started to become normalised around Y2K. Even if it was looking for many of the famed cheats like Bill’s Secret Garden, PokéGods, Yoshi, Mew being under the truck, etc. these all spread around because every class had a few kids that had heard this on the Internet somewhere.
I dunno how old you are but it's hard to overstate how big of a deal it was when Pokemon hit worldwide and Pokemania was a thing. It was everywhere. I've never seen a frenzy for anything like that since. It's the highest grossing media franchise of all time and it started with a HUGE bang. My parents bought my brother and I Game Boy Colors for Christmas and gave them to us a month early. I never got any other early Christmas gift for my entire childhood. That's how nuts we were for it.
The biggest anticipation I've ever seen for anything else was probably Harry Potter once it really picked up steam, but that was not even close to Pokemon, and I also had some distance from it because I was never really into Harry Potter at all.
Having said that - I do think that, with the huge install base now, if Game Freak were to come out with Pokemon Gen 10 and it was cross-gen and got very good reviews (like 9/10s) and was acclaimed more than recent titles, it would outsell the originals.
That's because it got Gen 1 had a lot of double dipping.
You had original Japanese release of Red and Green. Then later that year you had Japanese Blue released which fixed bugs and improved QoS. That formed the basis for international Red and Blue.
Then I believe the international versions formed the basis for Japanese Pikachu version which led to international Yellow: Special Pikachu version.
Same reason Street Fighter II is the highest selling SF game. All the various editions are still billed as just SF2.
Yea it was kinda weird to me that they put essentially like 4 different games together for that stat. I'm not sure how else to do it tho. Really shows how well gen 8 and 9 sold.
It's also just bad numbers. They bundle all forms of RB sales together. All the 3DS virtual console sales get added to that number while being $10 each and released in generation 6.
Going to school was almost like going to Pokémon class. We had competitions to see who could name the most from memory and multiple kids could do all 150.
Honestly I think it's coming. The Switch saw a Zelda, Animal Crossing and Smash Bros finally outsell Gen 1, and we can already seen the boost it's given S/S & S/V.
Gen 10 coinciding with the anniversary, presumably having support for Switch and Switch 2, and coming off the trajectory that the Switch games have had with the Legends titles and how well Galar and Paldea sold despite having glaring and opposite problems?
All Gen 10 has to do is look as good as Galar and play as good as Paldea or Legends and it's a guarantee they break the record.
Hell, even if they don't, they'll probably break it, but hey.
Those games were probably still very profitable despite the lower sales. They were all 90% the same game as the originals, just with slight changes to the climax and additional post game content, and minor additions to the main story. I can't imagine they were very expensive to produce.
Black and White 2 were probably quite a bit more expensive to produce tho, since they were a completely new story, and quite a few new assets had to be made for them. Which is probably why they went back to the "mostly the same game" format with USUM.
Its just so weird seeing it like this because I think from most fans POV the list would be almost flipped upside down for actual game quality.
Gen 5 was amazing yet sold the worst. Gen 8 got mocked profusely for performance issues, ugly textures and a boring narrative/world exploration yet its sold the best.
Its just so confusing until you realize the Switch installbase is just that big coupled with COVID locking people inside with any game they see come out.
Tbf, BW was the first time we got a 2nd gen on the same console, I remember people being disappointed they didn't wait for the next console before releasing. Gen5 also only had 2 games compared to 3+ of other gens so it's still a bit skewed, even if sales were slightly lower than normal.
You have to remember that Gen 5 had an underwhelming reception on release. The more hardcore and competitive audiences were still developing at the time, and it was only several years afterwards that people really came around to gen 5.
The list makes way more sense from a casual perspective, especially if you consider how the pokemon audience was growing up with the series.
BW/BW2 was the deepest dip in the post-Pokémania era. It sold the worst because Pokémon wasn’t worldwide phenomenon popular anymore, it was just a normally popular part of the childhood cycle and no different to something like the generational cycles of Power Rangers.
One thing that was telling for me was going to Japanese Pokémon Center stores in this era. You could go on a Friday evening and it would be dead save for a few kids. At the moment, they’re pretty much stuffed from opening to close. All of them.
Only people who haven't actually played 1 - 7 could say that. Way too low budget for the game they aimed to create, making the entire gen 8 very underwhelming
Gen 8 is helped by the fact that it had the most “different” games of any gen, and was on the most popular console of any generation. Gen 8 had the flagship game, the Diamond Pearl remakes, and legends arceus. It has the most variety of any gen so far.
Gen 5 was notorious for being poorly received at launch, especially due to the Unova Pokédex whose Pokémon designs were heavily ridiculed, especially being called words like “ugly abominations” or “Kanto ripoffs”. Many were furious over their beloved Kanto classics not being in B/W during the main story, let alone any older Pokémon.
While Game Freak did attempt something different with the regional Pokédex only having new Pokémon, the horror reception towards it is what led to B2/W2 and all subsequent regions having multi-gen focused Pokédexes and fewer new Pokémon. In fact, the next three generations introduced fewer than 100 new Pokémon before Gen 9 went back up.
Gen 8’s numbers are primarily helped by the Switch being the most popular Nintendo console of all time, especially with no longer having a handheld to compete that splits the playerbase.
I guess this shows why they stopped releasing a third game per generation, as Yellow, Crystal, Emerald, Platinum, and B&W 2 all had pretty steep drop-offs.
Yeah I’d like to see the DLC sales. They don’t need to create a physical cartridge so all the costs of manufacturing and shipping are gone, and the amount of extra material added is comparable to what we’d expect in third versions (maybe even less lol). So even if DLC is sold for much less there’s probably a lot of savings elsewhere
I imagine more people are willing to get DLC, where they can just continue with the playthrough they already had, vs getting a new (but similar) game and having to replay through it too.
Seeing that they want to scale back when Teal Mask / Indigo Disc were probably the best DLCs we’ve had for the Switch-era Pokemon games…but it probably explains Mega Dimensions lol
Other than not needing to print cartridges, which admittedly is a big deal, is it even cheaper? 3rd versions were like 90% reused content and they charged the same as a full game. DLC is cheaper and adds more.
I would imagine with dlc both being cheaper and not requiring starting a brand new copy of the game, it probably gets purchased by a significantly higher percentage of players than third versions were
A not unimportant thing to remember that follows with the DLC era is that you can live update games now which is another part of the reason for the 3rd version games: updating bugs, errors and balance that they missed.
If DLC wasn't a thing, I think they'd still do a 3rd version. Getting to reuse 80~90% of assets and still selling more than most games seems like a no brainer.
While that’s true, I can only imagine those third games were super cheap to make in comparison to the base games. Like 80% of all the work is already done.
They moved from making a third game to just making a dlc (which one could argue that’s what the third game was, the same as the first two but with extra content).
They did try and mix it up with the formula with US/UM, with making a new story, redesigning the protags, redesigning the areas and puzzles, expanding the lore and giving what is probably the biggest and longest post game story and that's what could be seen on the surface as US/UM is also the hardest pokemon games because they gave so many trainers full 6 mon teams, that was EV trained with perfect IVs, and buffed totem pokemon after being introduced the games prior whilst also there being strong as hell. Ultra necrozma need I say more?
But it just didn't sell, which is sad because I feel like US/UM were the end of traditional pokemon games being the last ones on handheld and all, and looking back at them they should probably be considered some of the beat Pokemon games with the amount of content they had, and how hard they were but didn't take away from the pokemon formula
It was specifically because of the BW/B2W2 backlash. Genwunners whined endlessly about the lack of legacy mons, hence the overcorrection in XY and beyond
A game selling that muchs copies in 96-98 wss astonishing. And is not even the most profitable part of the franchise.
Pokemon was a cultural shift phenomenon you can see only once in a generation
Not to mention, most of us were kids at the time and were at the mercy of our parents to buy us these games. We would've loved two versions of the same game, but our parents wouldn't have understood.
It was at a weird time where a lot of people were growing out of the franchise and B2W2 were also barley advertised in the west. I don't really seeing anything about them.
One thing I never see talked about but was huge at the time was how tired people were of 2D.
Zelda and Mario had already gone 3D, the 3DS came out, and Pokémon was still doing pixels?
Similarly, "first mainline Pokémon game on home console" is why Sword and Shield did so well despite being a massive step back on every level (before DLC, at least).
Oh my god THANK YOU. I bring this up every time people talk about why Gen 5 was unpopular, and they always default to "Genwunners hated designs" and "the story was too mature".
People really don't remember series burnout and how every pokemon game started to feel the same after a while. It's why they started adding battle gimmicks. For all intents and purposes, Gen V looked exactly the same as Gen 4 to the casual viewer.
People were BEGGING for 3D, it's always frustrating to see people say the series should've never left 2D.
I think it was just a ton of things. No old pokemon, no 3d, awful level curve, weird choices in the anime, dramatic artistic changes, increased focus on object-mons, more linear world map, restrictive early game... there were just a lot of things people didn't like. There was also some misinformation involved too; the games came out around the same time as the 3DS so a lot of people thought they were 3DS exclusive. Few of these were hard deal breakers, but combined it just meant a lot less people trying to get their friends to buy it.
2D was already outdated the moment DPP came out. The DS was perfectly capable of displaying 3d models and had a lot of games using this feature (Mario 64, FF3, Kingdom Hearts, etc...), meanwhile Pokemon had STATIC 2d sprites lol.
If Pokemon Diamond/Pearl used 3D "pretty well" then I'm a trained medical doctor because I can put on a bandaid.
At the time, it felt like the bare minimum. I actually really like the 5th gen games, but I have never been a fan of the look of the DS games myself (and don't like Diamond/Pearl/Platinum much as games). Keep in mind, this is a system that LAUNCHED in 2004 with Super Mario 64 DS as its centerpiece, showing that the Nintendo DS could handle doing 3D games... and 8 years later with Black 2/White 2, Pokemon is still doing that same look.
The DS notoriously struggled with 3D models, and most of the big 3D games were released near the beginning of the console’s lifespan because of it. While the console was capable of 3D graphics, there were a lot of caveats, you couldn’t display 3D objects on both screens at the same time, and games would often run blurrier, and at noticeably lower frame rates than sprite based games, I believe just in general most games had a lower poly count than even N64 games. Games like 64DS and MKDS needed to use tons of tricks to get the games to work. This is without mentioning storage limits of a DS cartridge, the largest cartridges were 512mb, the 493 pokemon in Gen IV would’ve taken up almost all of the space on the cartridge alone, and it would’ve been basically impossible to fit everything in Gen V on the cartridge.
I think a big part of it that a lot of people ignore, is most players aren't on Reddit talking about the games,nthe vast majority of pokemon players simply do not share the opinions held here and the sales unfortunately reflect that.
The whole "2" thing didn't help B2W2 either - you scare off customers who haven't played the first game, because they assume they won't understand it, just like with movies.
At the time it also kinda pissed people off that instead of just making one third version, they made two third versions, which was seen as a cash grab.
Not just after the 3DS released... a year and a half after it released.
I bought a 3DS in early 2013 because I didn't have the DS, and saw the announcement for Pokemon X/Y and got excited about Pokemon again. I went back and played the DS games because they were fairly cheap to buy at the time, but Black 2/White 2 were still full price because they had just come out a few months ago. I wasn't going to pay full price for a DS game in early 2013.
The best games have usually been the “3rd” version, where they can polish up the original release and have somewhat of a definitive edition. They hold up amazing for fans who go back and play games, but they aren’t as attractive to casual players who just want the first games released each gen.
Generation three was kind of a low point for the series in terms of relevance, though. The initial mania of the late nineties had passed, and it hadn't quite reached the point of cultural saturation that it is at today.
I say this as someone who gen three is when I started with the games and remains to this day my favorite.
Didn't things like crystal, emerald and platinum release after the first ones? Very few people I knew growing up bothered with those as they already had the other games.
Yeah it was basically a mini version of dexit at the time. I will say I think it was a bad decision even in hindsight, just make them more scarce if anything. X and Y steered in the opposite direction and the variety was great
X/Y was what brought me back to the series and I enjoyed it a lot, but I will say as someone who initially scoffed at that decision for Black/White when I heard about it, when I actually got around to playing it I did sort of appreciate it.
The problem wasn't that they didn't let you get the older Pokemon, the problem was that the new set was ONLY a new 150 which felt like a very limited set to work with for the whole main game. If they had done say 250 new Pokemon, it would have been better but obviously that is a bigger undertaking.
Honestly I am curious of what gen 5's sales would have been like if the 3ds came out 2 years later than it did or if gen 5 came out 2 years later and waa repurposed to a 3d world and launched as a 3ds exclusive.
In a vacuum yeah I agree but I'm reality they are almost the exact same game as the originals plus a battle frontier for full price. I can remember wanting emerald but when you only get a game every so often it's hard to justify getting basically the same game again.
The Switch has been an absolute monster for sales. Mario Kart, 3D Mario, Zelda, Animal Crossing, Smash Bros, Mario Party, Metroid all have had their best sellers on the console.
Lots of my online friends and acquaintances who stopped playing Pokemon 15-25 years ago got back into the series solely because it was the first new generation they could play on a TV. I imagine this happened elsewhere as well.
One of the first ever 3D mainline games (All prior ones failed the above)
On an extremely successful console that everyone and their mother owned or wanted
People will say covid helped, but Sword and Shield came out in 2019 months before the pandemic and sold over 6 million copies in its opening weekend (at the time the best ever Switch game release). The pandemic did not hurt, but it was obviously not the main battery for SwSh's success
Able to ride in a lot of the new hype from Pokémon Go since it was only 3 years old at the time.
Its a negligible difference though. 15M seems like the hard cap on non mainline (I know gamefreak considers Legends mainline) games on the switch. Its actually pretty neat that they all sold the same basically.
Having two versions is a significant buff to sales. (For example, USUM outperforming Emerald, Platinum etc). On top of that, Arceus came out in January while BDSP had a holiday release.
I honestly can’t fathom people buying two versions being common enough to affect sales like that. It’s such a wild concept to me, buying the same game twice.
To be fair, it's a pretty small minority of people who actually buy both versions. The raised sales usually come from parents with multiple kids. If there was only one version, they might buy just one copy and tell the kids to share. Having multiple versions makes parents more willing to buy one of each.
I think this perfectly illustrates why a physical copy of Emerald has gotten so expensive. The amount of units sold is basically the all time low, but as we can see Pokemon's overall populaity has shot way up in the last 5-6 years. Many new fans coming in and old fans rediscovering the series, with legacy fans still toting how great Emerald is. Gets the new and returning folks to want to seek out a copy. Not saying the price is totally justified, just that this visual kind of helps me see the whole picture.
Congrats on the purchase! Yes luckily most will turn to remakes and emulation, especially since most just want to do one playthrough, which is not worth the absurd price tag.
Glad I'm an old head and have had mine for 20 years, these prices are only getting worse.
Ah nah - they just got the figures from Bulbapedia, who got it from here. While the source seems to have rereleased, Bulbapedia seemingly didn't use those, so it's not counting rereleases.
Black & White did a lot better saleswise than you'd have thought, given their reputation for years on end (especially if you played competitive and were sick of every game being weather wars!)
I understand that not everyone is down with buying what is essentially a revamped version of the same game, hence why they started doing postgame DLC starting with Sword and Shield, but it is still CRIMINAL that Emerald, Platinum, Ultra Sun and Moon and B2W2 all sold that poorly.
Agreed. S/V to this day is my top favorite mainline game. Fantastic gimmick, amazing story, amazing rivals, amazing mons, and an amazing 2 part DLC. Baseline overworld could use some work, but the DLC does it pretty well.
SwSh was fine, but I wasn't the biggest fan of the baseline wild area and the story. Characters were pretty good though. DLC areas were fantastic however, a definite highlight for me.
This is definitely a hot take, but I don't think BDSP were that bad. Do I prefer them to Platinum? Definitely not, but for what they are, they're still fun games.
And realistically, if we got a proper HGSS/ORAS style remake, we probably wouldn't have got Legends Arceus, and that's my favorite game of the switch era, and at least top 5 in the series for me.
And realistically, if we got a proper HGSS/ORAS style remake, we probably wouldn't have got Legends Arceus
PLA was in development first, but they didn't have much confidence that it would sell since it was so different. They decided to do the Sinnoh remakes to hedge their bets.
It’s funny how Emerald is one of the least sold here, yet is probably one of the most ROM hacked games ever
and considered vastly as one of the best pokémon games
Same goes for platinum. It’s obviously because they’re the third versions so most of the people who already had RS/DP didn’t want to spend another 40 bucks for essentially the same game. With that said, even if we’re just counting the first games of a generation, that would put Gen 5 as the worst generation despite it being very highly rated these days.
Pokémon players are just not very smart with their purchases.
Also consider that Emerald only sold half as many copies as Ruby/Sapphire, which are placed in the same category. The metric has 2 games vs 1 game, so emerald sold roughly as many copies as ONLY ruby and ONLY sapphire
This right here, lots of die hard fans bought both versions too.
Seems more like everyone got one or the other abd then also Crystal
I personally had 2 sapphires and an emerald, and my brother had a ruby lol
I mean I would consider the main versions essentially one product. I doubt that a large percentage of people bought both games for one person
Good point but there were probably more people that bought both than you would expect. Version exclusives are made for that exact purpose after all and they exist today, so it must work to some degree
Yes, it would be great to see the same graph but with sales for both versions separated
5 was hated because there was no pre-gen 5 Pokemon and there was massive backlash at some of the regions designs. It's well received now because a) it's the most playable singleplayer experience, b) people have either softened up on the designs or have aged out of pokemon. Klingklang and Voltorb are equally stupid (in a way I don't mind) and if you think otherwise nostalgia has blinded you.
Yeah Platinum legit completed those games.
Black and White was caught in an uproar among the fans for not having any returning Pokémon until the end credits. I remember seeing people saying they were done with the series because of this and would not be returning. Fans of Generation I were particularly bitter about it.
The Pokémon games have been trying to correct this mistake since (and arguably have been overcorrecting, though it is pretty evident that some Generation I Pokémon sell games all by themselves, like Charizard, Mewtwo, Pikachu, and Eevee).
People also did not like the pivot towards Pokémon based on inanimate objects like the Vanillite line and the Litwick line, that there were what appeared to be counterparts to Pokémon found in previous generations (like Frillish to Tentacool), or, in some cases, the greater emphasis on story and its characters (there were a lot of people who played Pokémon games specifically because it was so plot-light compared to other JRPG series and didn’t like how Black and White were so dialogue heavy—the same fans would dislike Sun and Moon even more for the same reasons).
It's because they were 2D games long after the 3D era had started.
I guess it’s more so about the capabilities of the game engine and the ease of modding GBA games. The CFRU project has given us an easier entry point for more creators to get into GBA Pokémon modding.
GBC games are still very much like GBA games, but the GBA’s capabilities gives much more leeway to express creativity. You can see some very nice sprite works from GBA games.
DS games are more complex, they are now 2.5D (if I’m using the term correctly?). Lots and lots of room to work with but the faux 3D sprites are obviously requires much more work to make them look good and in line with the base DS game aesthetics.
GBA games sits right in the middle.
Also the GBA games have way more memory space to work with. Hacking GBC if I want to add more than a couple pokemon/moves I have to delete other ones, there is very limited open memory to work with. GBA has plenty of room plus is just as easy to hack, so people have a lot more freedom.
You see this in other franchises too: the most advanced game that's still rooted in simple tile-based levels is usually the most suitable for rom hacking. You can do a lot more with Super Mario World than Mario 64 or Mario 3, striking the ideal balance of capability and simplicity, so that's where the community gathers.
Third game is usually the best, just look at Crystal, Emerald and Platinum.
Even Yellow technically. It fixed some of, but not all, of the AI issues, some improved spritework, fixed a fair number of movesets, and some trainers/gym leaders that were an absolute meme are much more difficult.
As somebody who dislikes Diamond/Pearl a lot... it was not hard to improve on that. Literally all Platinum had to do was speed up battles slightly and it would have been an improvement. And it does, and it still feels like absolute fucking molasses.
I imagine a lot of people just don’t get the “upgraded” version of the games for a given generation. Like if you already had Ruby or Sapphire, you might have thought Emerald was unnecessary. Same thing for BW2.
I’m sure plenty of people just get one game a generation.
Yes which is why TPC must come up with new gens to keep the interest up.
Emerald has the most romhacks because it's the most recent game that's been fully decompiled, meaning it's much more accessible and you can do some crazy stuff with it. Not to mention of all the romhacks with custom sprite work, that's way harder to do on a DS game than a GBA game
Pretty sure emerald is low hanging fruit when it comes to rom hacking
Because buying a full priced game that’s nearly identical to the last installment aside from an hour or two of content isn’t high on anyone’s priority list
I would offer a few explanations:
Again just personal opinion here but: I was not a big fan of Gen 3, I liked FR/LG the best because I adore the original games, but still prefer the original over FR/LG. The reason the games are the most ROM hacked entries is NOT because they are the best -- it's because the GBA took way, way, way less horsepower to emulate than the Nintendo DS, and many people (myself included) prefer the look of the GBA games which are closer to the originals than the DS games which look the most janky with their first steps into 3D. The GBA is also just much easier to ROMhack for than the DS.
They have obviously never done another release in that style since 2004, everything has just moved forward since. So 20+ years later, Emerald is still the standard for "ROM hackable Pokemon game with simple sprite-based art that you want to be able to run on absolutely everything".
Prob my favorite game and time most spent playing as a kid
so interesting to see how no pokemon game yet has beaten the sales of Red, Green and Blue in 30 years
That's how strong Pokémania was back in the day. It's kinda like how Power Rangers is most well-known for its first incarnation, despite it going on for far longer than that.
Though, something tells me that if a mainline Pokémon game dropped on the Wii, that it would have outsold Gen 1.
I don't think so. The only Wii games that outsold Red + Blue + Green were pack-in titles (Wii Sports, Mario Kart Wii, Wii Sports Resort, New Super Mario Bros. Wii).
Of those 4 games, only Wii Sports outsold Red + Blue + Green + Yellow
I doubt it with the wii. I mean unless they're games were on par with everything else on the wii. But they were still making handheld games, which sold exceptionally well on the ds already.
You're forgetting how insane system sales for wii were. Just by nature of how many people would have access to a new Pokemon game, a real mainline wii game would have done insanely well.
The DS outsold the Wii by like 50 million units lol
It would do insanely well. But like another comment pointed out the only wii game to outsell original red and blue were pack in titles you would get with the console
Wii sales are misleading in a way. A ton of people bought it for wii sports and dance games and NOTHING else. I can see a mainline pokemon game on wii doing LGPE numbers but not much more.
It was insane, this was a time with no internet (or not so much) and games relied heavily on mouth to mouth propaganda. Even if one day the record will be broken, it still doesn‘t have the same effect as back in the day, since there are so many people now and hype is being pushed more by other influences.
Overall media is much more fragmented now. In 1996 you could buy commercial spots on Nickelodeon and Disney channel and boom you've advertised to most children in America. Imo it's actually harder to get widespread word of mouth stand out in the noise of the Internet these days.
What honestly impresses me more is that the global population of gamers is so much larger 30+ years later and in spite of that RBG still can't be topped.
Is that where you speak into someone else's mouth?
Yeah, what a bizarre way of saying word of mouth..
Only thing that came close to "the world is enamored with the franchise" was when Pokémon Go kicked off. That had a slight feeling of what it was like back in the 90s.
There was plenty of Internet (for its time); one of the reasons Pokémon is/was so massive was because it was one of the first games to have a huge thriving online community as usage of the Internet started to become normalised around Y2K. Even if it was looking for many of the famed cheats like Bill’s Secret Garden, PokéGods, Yoshi, Mew being under the truck, etc. these all spread around because every class had a few kids that had heard this on the Internet somewhere.
Yupppp! The first website i ever visited was cheatplanet.com for gameshark codes for Pokémon red. Pokémon's online presence was huge back in the 90s.
You had the anime on tv nearly every saturday morning to promote it.
You then had much less competition and a much cheaper console opening up more parents buying it for kids.
I dunno how old you are but it's hard to overstate how big of a deal it was when Pokemon hit worldwide and Pokemania was a thing. It was everywhere. I've never seen a frenzy for anything like that since. It's the highest grossing media franchise of all time and it started with a HUGE bang. My parents bought my brother and I Game Boy Colors for Christmas and gave them to us a month early. I never got any other early Christmas gift for my entire childhood. That's how nuts we were for it.
The biggest anticipation I've ever seen for anything else was probably Harry Potter once it really picked up steam, but that was not even close to Pokemon, and I also had some distance from it because I was never really into Harry Potter at all.
Having said that - I do think that, with the huge install base now, if Game Freak were to come out with Pokemon Gen 10 and it was cross-gen and got very good reviews (like 9/10s) and was acclaimed more than recent titles, it would outsell the originals.
That's because it got Gen 1 had a lot of double dipping.
You had original Japanese release of Red and Green. Then later that year you had Japanese Blue released which fixed bugs and improved QoS. That formed the basis for international Red and Blue.
Then I believe the international versions formed the basis for Japanese Pikachu version which led to international Yellow: Special Pikachu version.
Same reason Street Fighter II is the highest selling SF game. All the various editions are still billed as just SF2.
Yea it was kinda weird to me that they put essentially like 4 different games together for that stat. I'm not sure how else to do it tho. Really shows how well gen 8 and 9 sold.
It's also just bad numbers. They bundle all forms of RB sales together. All the 3DS virtual console sales get added to that number while being $10 each and released in generation 6.
Going to school was almost like going to Pokémon class. We had competitions to see who could name the most from memory and multiple kids could do all 150.
Amazing how they sold a 3rd version 3 times despite the sales not being amazing, at least in comparison
Do we think there'll ever be a game that outsells Red, Green, & Blue?
tbh it was very cheap to create
Honestly I think it's coming. The Switch saw a Zelda, Animal Crossing and Smash Bros finally outsell Gen 1, and we can already seen the boost it's given S/S & S/V.
Gen 10 coinciding with the anniversary, presumably having support for Switch and Switch 2, and coming off the trajectory that the Switch games have had with the Legends titles and how well Galar and Paldea sold despite having glaring and opposite problems?
All Gen 10 has to do is look as good as Galar and play as good as Paldea or Legends and it's a guarantee they break the record.
Hell, even if they don't, they'll probably break it, but hey.
It's only switch 2 as that's what the Teraleak said.
Ah, not breaking any records then. That's a shame.
A switch 1 release for Gen 10 would be disastrous
It was basically the cartridge equivalent of DLC. It was millions of dollars they wouldn't have made if they hadn't done it.
Those 3rd versions were probably 300% more profitable than the original versions
Those games were probably still very profitable despite the lower sales. They were all 90% the same game as the originals, just with slight changes to the climax and additional post game content, and minor additions to the main story. I can't imagine they were very expensive to produce.
Black and White 2 were probably quite a bit more expensive to produce tho, since they were a completely new story, and quite a few new assets had to be made for them. Which is probably why they went back to the "mostly the same game" format with USUM.
The sales were great. Its not bad because its lower than the very best lol.
Gen Ranking:
Gen 8: 56,85 M |
Gen 1: 45,69 M |
Gen 7: 40,63 M |
Gen 4: 37,99 M |
Gen 3: 35,28 M |
Gen 6: 31,39 M |
Gen 2: 30,12 M |
Gen 9: 27,61 M |
Gen 5: 24,16 M
Its just so weird seeing it like this because I think from most fans POV the list would be almost flipped upside down for actual game quality.
Gen 5 was amazing yet sold the worst. Gen 8 got mocked profusely for performance issues, ugly textures and a boring narrative/world exploration yet its sold the best.
Its just so confusing until you realize the Switch installbase is just that big coupled with COVID locking people inside with any game they see come out.
Once you get ZA added to gen 9 it’ll also be top 4. SV is2nd highest individual game too.
Tbf, BW was the first time we got a 2nd gen on the same console, I remember people being disappointed they didn't wait for the next console before releasing. Gen5 also only had 2 games compared to 3+ of other gens so it's still a bit skewed, even if sales were slightly lower than normal.
not only that but black white launched just a few months before the 3ds and then bw2 was over a year after the 3ds was released.
You have to remember that Gen 5 had an underwhelming reception on release. The more hardcore and competitive audiences were still developing at the time, and it was only several years afterwards that people really came around to gen 5.
The list makes way more sense from a casual perspective, especially if you consider how the pokemon audience was growing up with the series.
BW/BW2 was the deepest dip in the post-Pokémania era. It sold the worst because Pokémon wasn’t worldwide phenomenon popular anymore, it was just a normally popular part of the childhood cycle and no different to something like the generational cycles of Power Rangers.
One thing that was telling for me was going to Japanese Pokémon Center stores in this era. You could go on a Friday evening and it would be dead save for a few kids. At the moment, they’re pretty much stuffed from opening to close. All of them.
Gen 8 gets too much slander IMO (except BDSP).
Only people who haven't actually played 1 - 7 could say that. Way too low budget for the game they aimed to create, making the entire gen 8 very underwhelming
My first game was Yellow in the early 2000s. I've played at least one of each set from leaf green onwards. Gen 8 didn't deserve the hate it got.
Gen 8 is helped by the fact that it had the most “different” games of any gen, and was on the most popular console of any generation. Gen 8 had the flagship game, the Diamond Pearl remakes, and legends arceus. It has the most variety of any gen so far.
Gen 5 was notorious for being poorly received at launch, especially due to the Unova Pokédex whose Pokémon designs were heavily ridiculed, especially being called words like “ugly abominations” or “Kanto ripoffs”. Many were furious over their beloved Kanto classics not being in B/W during the main story, let alone any older Pokémon.
While Game Freak did attempt something different with the regional Pokédex only having new Pokémon, the horror reception towards it is what led to B2/W2 and all subsequent regions having multi-gen focused Pokédexes and fewer new Pokémon. In fact, the next three generations introduced fewer than 100 new Pokémon before Gen 9 went back up.
Gen 8’s numbers are primarily helped by the Switch being the most popular Nintendo console of all time, especially with no longer having a handheld to compete that splits the playerbase.
I guess this shows why they stopped releasing a third game per generation, as Yellow, Crystal, Emerald, Platinum, and B&W 2 all had pretty steep drop-offs.
7 million sales for relatively minimal effort is nothing to scoff at. I think DLC becoming commonplace forced their hand.
I don't think it is forcing their hand as much as they themselves seeing it as a better option financially.
Yeah I’d like to see the DLC sales. They don’t need to create a physical cartridge so all the costs of manufacturing and shipping are gone, and the amount of extra material added is comparable to what we’d expect in third versions (maybe even less lol). So even if DLC is sold for much less there’s probably a lot of savings elsewhere
I imagine more people are willing to get DLC, where they can just continue with the playthrough they already had, vs getting a new (but similar) game and having to replay through it too.
We did get info about the DLC sales in the terraleaks: https://nintendosoup.com/rumor-pokemon-scarlet-violet-dlc-sold-6-15-million-copies-went-significantly-overbudget/
Seeing that they want to scale back when Teal Mask / Indigo Disc were probably the best DLCs we’ve had for the Switch-era Pokemon games…but it probably explains Mega Dimensions lol
Other than not needing to print cartridges, which admittedly is a big deal, is it even cheaper? 3rd versions were like 90% reused content and they charged the same as a full game. DLC is cheaper and adds more.
I would imagine with dlc both being cheaper and not requiring starting a brand new copy of the game, it probably gets purchased by a significantly higher percentage of players than third versions were
A not unimportant thing to remember that follows with the DLC era is that you can live update games now which is another part of the reason for the 3rd version games: updating bugs, errors and balance that they missed.
If DLC wasn't a thing, I think they'd still do a 3rd version. Getting to reuse 80~90% of assets and still selling more than most games seems like a no brainer.
There was a Pokemon Z that was in early development but was canned to allow Gen 7 to release in the 20th anniversary year.
Gen 7 released Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon, (which easily could have been condensed into a single 3rd version Eclipse)
DLC was the end to the revamped definitive versions
Unironically that gen was the one that really could’ve used a 3rd game since XY always felt so half baked and finished.
While that’s true, I can only imagine those third games were super cheap to make in comparison to the base games. Like 80% of all the work is already done.
Most games would kill to sell 7 million copies.
Its unfortunate too, because those were usually the better games.
Yellow at 14.64m is pretty impressive when the 31.05m number is red, green and blue combined. I’m also biased cause yellow is my goat
It also counts virtual console sales despite being 20 years later on a different console for a fraction of the price.
They honestly aren't that steep if you don't count the paired games together.
Like sure, Emerald sold less than Ruby and Sapphire.
...but it basically sold the same amount as Ruby.
They moved from making a third game to just making a dlc (which one could argue that’s what the third game was, the same as the first two but with extra content).
They did try and mix it up with the formula with US/UM, with making a new story, redesigning the protags, redesigning the areas and puzzles, expanding the lore and giving what is probably the biggest and longest post game story and that's what could be seen on the surface as US/UM is also the hardest pokemon games because they gave so many trainers full 6 mon teams, that was EV trained with perfect IVs, and buffed totem pokemon after being introduced the games prior whilst also there being strong as hell. Ultra necrozma need I say more?
But it just didn't sell, which is sad because I feel like US/UM were the end of traditional pokemon games being the last ones on handheld and all, and looking back at them they should probably be considered some of the beat Pokemon games with the amount of content they had, and how hard they were but didn't take away from the pokemon formula
It was specifically because of the BW/B2W2 backlash. Genwunners whined endlessly about the lack of legacy mons, hence the overcorrection in XY and beyond
B&W2 wasn’t a third game, they were entirely different games. The only time they’ve done direct sequels.
Not technically true. GSC was a direct sequel. That's one of the reasons for a lot of its more questionable decisions (like pokemon distribution).
A game selling that muchs copies in 96-98 wss astonishing. And is not even the most profitable part of the franchise. Pokemon was a cultural shift phenomenon you can see only once in a generation
It's so unfair that the absolute best games in the series are at the bottom
I think that this is kind of misleading, though.
It's comparing one game to two or three combined.
That and they’re very similar games. To a lot of people there’s no reason to buy Emerald when you have Ruby, or Platinum when you have Diamond
Yeah, that was me with Emerald which is a shame. Especially how I played the absolute shit out of Silver AND Crystal.
Not to mention, most of us were kids at the time and were at the mercy of our parents to buy us these games. We would've loved two versions of the same game, but our parents wouldn't have understood.
It was at a weird time where a lot of people were growing out of the franchise and B2W2 were also barley advertised in the west. I don't really seeing anything about them.
One thing I never see talked about but was huge at the time was how tired people were of 2D.
Zelda and Mario had already gone 3D, the 3DS came out, and Pokémon was still doing pixels?
Similarly, "first mainline Pokémon game on home console" is why Sword and Shield did so well despite being a massive step back on every level (before DLC, at least).
Oh my god THANK YOU. I bring this up every time people talk about why Gen 5 was unpopular, and they always default to "Genwunners hated designs" and "the story was too mature".
People really don't remember series burnout and how every pokemon game started to feel the same after a while. It's why they started adding battle gimmicks. For all intents and purposes, Gen V looked exactly the same as Gen 4 to the casual viewer.
People were BEGGING for 3D, it's always frustrating to see people say the series should've never left 2D.
I think it was just a ton of things. No old pokemon, no 3d, awful level curve, weird choices in the anime, dramatic artistic changes, increased focus on object-mons, more linear world map, restrictive early game... there were just a lot of things people didn't like. There was also some misinformation involved too; the games came out around the same time as the 3DS so a lot of people thought they were 3DS exclusive. Few of these were hard deal breakers, but combined it just meant a lot less people trying to get their friends to buy it.
2D was already outdated the moment DPP came out. The DS was perfectly capable of displaying 3d models and had a lot of games using this feature (Mario 64, FF3, Kingdom Hearts, etc...), meanwhile Pokemon had STATIC 2d sprites lol.
While the Pokémon sprites were 2D, the world used 3D pretty well
If Pokemon Diamond/Pearl used 3D "pretty well" then I'm a trained medical doctor because I can put on a bandaid.
At the time, it felt like the bare minimum. I actually really like the 5th gen games, but I have never been a fan of the look of the DS games myself (and don't like Diamond/Pearl/Platinum much as games). Keep in mind, this is a system that LAUNCHED in 2004 with Super Mario 64 DS as its centerpiece, showing that the Nintendo DS could handle doing 3D games... and 8 years later with Black 2/White 2, Pokemon is still doing that same look.
The DS notoriously struggled with 3D models, and most of the big 3D games were released near the beginning of the console’s lifespan because of it. While the console was capable of 3D graphics, there were a lot of caveats, you couldn’t display 3D objects on both screens at the same time, and games would often run blurrier, and at noticeably lower frame rates than sprite based games, I believe just in general most games had a lower poly count than even N64 games. Games like 64DS and MKDS needed to use tons of tricks to get the games to work. This is without mentioning storage limits of a DS cartridge, the largest cartridges were 512mb, the 493 pokemon in Gen IV would’ve taken up almost all of the space on the cartridge alone, and it would’ve been basically impossible to fit everything in Gen V on the cartridge.
I think a big part of it that a lot of people ignore, is most players aren't on Reddit talking about the games,nthe vast majority of pokemon players simply do not share the opinions held here and the sales unfortunately reflect that.
It's hard to judge games around SwSh era because of COVID. So many games saw explosion in popularity because of it.
The whole "2" thing didn't help B2W2 either - you scare off customers who haven't played the first game, because they assume they won't understand it, just like with movies.
At the time it also kinda pissed people off that instead of just making one third version, they made two third versions, which was seen as a cash grab.
Let's also not forget BW2 came out on the DS after the 3DS released. That never impacts well either.
Not just after the 3DS released... a year and a half after it released.
I bought a 3DS in early 2013 because I didn't have the DS, and saw the announcement for Pokemon X/Y and got excited about Pokemon again. I went back and played the DS games because they were fairly cheap to buy at the time, but Black 2/White 2 were still full price because they had just come out a few months ago. I wasn't going to pay full price for a DS game in early 2013.
Crystal is still my favorite pokemon game to this day
The best games have usually been the “3rd” version, where they can polish up the original release and have somewhat of a definitive edition. They hold up amazing for fans who go back and play games, but they aren’t as attractive to casual players who just want the first games released each gen.
It's because only the die hards with a lot of extra money would buy essentially the same game again.
Generation three was kind of a low point for the series in terms of relevance, though. The initial mania of the late nineties had passed, and it hadn't quite reached the point of cultural saturation that it is at today.
I say this as someone who gen three is when I started with the games and remains to this day my favorite.
Didn't things like crystal, emerald and platinum release after the first ones? Very few people I knew growing up bothered with those as they already had the other games.
Also Crystal was only for the GBC, a lot of kids I knew growing up played GS on their gameboys.
Where I lived at least so many people went GB -> GBA bypassing the GBC
It's why I didn't have crystal until much much later in life.
Seriously? EVERYONE I knew had a GBC. I don’t know a single person who played it on an original GB (or pocket, which I had).
Emerald was like two years after Ruby/Sapphire in the US, even.
Yeah that's what I was noticing. Hell, I never played Crystal as well tbh. It's that and Ultra Soon/Moon for me
Probably what made Gamefreak afraid of change... even though they were still resounding successes.
Yeah black and white the lowest out of all the main gen games is a crime
15m is still a lot and BW was sold out at half the stores here on release.
BW was heavily criticized at the time for not featuring any older Pokemon until the post-game
Yeah it was basically a mini version of dexit at the time. I will say I think it was a bad decision even in hindsight, just make them more scarce if anything. X and Y steered in the opposite direction and the variety was great
X/Y was what brought me back to the series and I enjoyed it a lot, but I will say as someone who initially scoffed at that decision for Black/White when I heard about it, when I actually got around to playing it I did sort of appreciate it.
The problem wasn't that they didn't let you get the older Pokemon, the problem was that the new set was ONLY a new 150 which felt like a very limited set to work with for the whole main game. If they had done say 250 new Pokemon, it would have been better but obviously that is a bigger undertaking.
Honestly I am curious of what gen 5's sales would have been like if the 3ds came out 2 years later than it did or if gen 5 came out 2 years later and waa repurposed to a 3d world and launched as a 3ds exclusive.
Much less market access on the DS than the Switch, that said UltraSun and UltraMoon? Seriously that high?
In a vacuum yeah I agree but I'm reality they are almost the exact same game as the originals plus a battle frontier for full price. I can remember wanting emerald but when you only get a game every so often it's hard to justify getting basically the same game again.
Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl, Legends Arceus, and Scarlet/Violet all came out in a year timeframe.
Super interesting! What do you think caused the resurgence with Sword and Shield?
Nintendo Switch is a massively popular console
It’s also now the sole Nintendo console. The GBA-3DS eras were all competing with the GameCube/Wii
The Switch has been an absolute monster for sales. Mario Kart, 3D Mario, Zelda, Animal Crossing, Smash Bros, Mario Party, Metroid all have had their best sellers on the console.
The switch was an absolute beast in getting consoles sold as well. So it is only fitting that it got a bunch of games with monster numbers
The Switch sold incredibly and the pandemic saw a resurgence in popularity for the franchise as a whole
I think it also being the first "proper" home console game helped a lot.
Really no need to think on this one, answer is simple.
First console mainline game. Really all it was
First mainline game after pokemon go and everyone had a switch by then
Sun & Moon were the first games after Pokémon Go
That's Let's Go, it's in the damn name lol
SM and USUM also came out after Go.
I was baited by the most obvious option lol
A mainline Pokémon game on a home console.
It's impossible to overstate how big of a deal that was.
Lots of my online friends and acquaintances who stopped playing Pokemon 15-25 years ago got back into the series solely because it was the first new generation they could play on a TV. I imagine this happened elsewhere as well.
First new generation on the Switch
Covid.
Half of it took place in Sinnoh.
How the f was Legends Arceus sold less than BDSP and Sword and Shield!??
Because it didn't have 2 versions.
Aimed at the gaming audience rather than the broad base the main games are marketed for. Arceus’s action gameplay is less approachable for some.
Its a negligible difference though. 15M seems like the hard cap on non mainline (I know gamefreak considers Legends mainline) games on the switch. Its actually pretty neat that they all sold the same basically.
Having two versions is a significant buff to sales. (For example, USUM outperforming Emerald, Platinum etc). On top of that, Arceus came out in January while BDSP had a holiday release.
I honestly can’t fathom people buying two versions being common enough to affect sales like that. It’s such a wild concept to me, buying the same game twice.
To be fair, it's a pretty small minority of people who actually buy both versions. The raised sales usually come from parents with multiple kids. If there was only one version, they might buy just one copy and tell the kids to share. Having multiple versions makes parents more willing to buy one of each.
Can confirm, my parents always bought both versions.
One version for me and the other for my sibling
In addition to what everyone else said many people likely bought BDSP expecting an awesome remake without looking at it beforehand.
I think this perfectly illustrates why a physical copy of Emerald has gotten so expensive. The amount of units sold is basically the all time low, but as we can see Pokemon's overall populaity has shot way up in the last 5-6 years. Many new fans coming in and old fans rediscovering the series, with legacy fans still toting how great Emerald is. Gets the new and returning folks to want to seek out a copy. Not saying the price is totally justified, just that this visual kind of helps me see the whole picture.
Got a genuine copy with an okay sticker and a new battery last year… it was not cheap.
Gen 3 GBA remakes satisfy the itch for 99.9% of players luckily. Only got a genuine to trade up the pipeline to home.
Congrats on the purchase! Yes luckily most will turn to remakes and emulation, especially since most just want to do one playthrough, which is not worth the absurd price tag.
Glad I'm an old head and have had mine for 20 years, these prices are only getting worse.
And to think the games have a budget roughly around those numbers, lol
Few times in history something so lucrative has been seen.
Crystal is my favorite, but it sold the worst.
Crazy how Legends Arceus is so low in sales. It's truly one of the most beautiful Pokemon games, imo the very best of them all but that's just me.
Sun and Moon were the last Pokémon games I played. I should probably find a way to play the new ones.
Some of those older ones would continue to sell a lot more if you could buy them for your switch.
Are the various re-releases of Red and Blue included in these sales statistics?
If you mean Yellow, FireRed & LeafGreen and Let's Go Pikachu! & Let's Go Eevee!, you can see them on the chart
why would they mean that when they said red and blue
When I write Red and Blue I mean Red and Blue. They have been re-released for Virtual Console.
Ah nah - they just got the figures from Bulbapedia, who got it from here. While the source seems to have rereleased, Bulbapedia seemingly didn't use those, so it's not counting rereleases.
Super curious how Colosseum, Mystery Dungeons, and other side titles did compared to mainline games
r/dataisbeautiful
Pokemon Red reigning supreme.
Funny how internet bubbles would have you think the opposite about a lot of these.
Seems like Pokemon is in a renaissance then if you look at sales numbers
Black & White did a lot better saleswise than you'd have thought, given their reputation for years on end (especially if you played competitive and were sick of every game being weather wars!)
Legends Z-A is pretty close to Arceus now.
RBY were good but for me it was GSC that was truly special.
Wow Pokémon really was stuck at ~15 Mil average until GO gave SWSH and SV a massive fucking boost
I want to see how legends za compares.
What about ZA?
Nice graph!
Remember none of these numbers mean anything without the install base of how many handhelds/consoles are sold too
So basically none of its mainline games sold less than 5 million like ever, which is wow ok
Brilliant diamond and pearl outselling Legends Arceus is an agitating fact
Damn the best pokemon games actually sold the least
B-b-but Scarlet/Violet is bad!!!! The YouTubers in my coomputer told me so!!!!!!!!!
Scarlett and Violet are objectively good games.
People shitting on fans for buying newer games are clowns
Legends Arceus being half of S/V makes me so sad
I understand that not everyone is down with buying what is essentially a revamped version of the same game, hence why they started doing postgame DLC starting with Sword and Shield, but it is still CRIMINAL that Emerald, Platinum, Ultra Sun and Moon and B2W2 all sold that poorly.
Especially when B2W2 is not a 3rd editio .
Gens 8 and 9 have been amazing. I've enjoyed every game on switch even BDSP.
Agreed. S/V to this day is my top favorite mainline game. Fantastic gimmick, amazing story, amazing rivals, amazing mons, and an amazing 2 part DLC. Baseline overworld could use some work, but the DLC does it pretty well.
SwSh was fine, but I wasn't the biggest fan of the baseline wild area and the story. Characters were pretty good though. DLC areas were fantastic however, a definite highlight for me.
This is definitely a hot take, but I don't think BDSP were that bad. Do I prefer them to Platinum? Definitely not, but for what they are, they're still fun games.
And realistically, if we got a proper HGSS/ORAS style remake, we probably wouldn't have got Legends Arceus, and that's my favorite game of the switch era, and at least top 5 in the series for me.
PLA was in development first, but they didn't have much confidence that it would sell since it was so different. They decided to do the Sinnoh remakes to hedge their bets.