The Nintendo Switch 2 has been a huge sales success since its launch in June, and people are starting to buy games to go along with the new console.
Pokémon Legends: Z-A launched simultaneously on Switch and Switch 2 couple of weeks ago and is knocking it out of the park, sales-wise, according to a couple of different sources. The first is The Pokémon Company itself, which claimed in a press release (via GameSpot) that the game sold 5.8 million copies within a week of launch. That’s not horribly surprising, but analyst Mat Piscatella of Circana also pointed out on Bluesky that the game had the biggest physical retail launch of any video game in the U.S. in at least two and a half years.
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For context, Piscatella said the last video game to do as well as Legends: Z-A is doing at brick-and-mortar stores was The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, another Nintendo exclusive, in May of 2023. Again, that doesn’t even factor in digital sales, which make up a huge portion of all modern video game purchases. Piscatella didn’t provide specific numbers, but as GameSpot pointed out, Tears of the Kingdom sold 10 million units (across physical and digital) in three days. Suffice it to say, Pokémon is doing quite well for itself if it’s even remotely in that territory.
The Switch 2’s lineup of exclusives is slowly rounding into form now, with Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, Kirby Air Riders, and Metroid Prime 4 all dropping before the end of the year, too. Those may not all do Pokémon numbers, but expect Nintendo to be sitting pretty by the time its next quarterly earnings report comes out.
