Impressive physical sales in the UK have made Pokémon Scarlet and Violet the biggest boxed video game launch of the year. Previously, this accolade was held by FIFA 23.
This has also won Scarlet and Violet the title of being the UK’s second biggest boxed Pokémon launch of all time. The biggest is still that of the 3DS’s Sun and Moon (although, due to sale prices, charts firm GfK states Scarlet and Violet has generated more money than Sun and Moon did during its launch week).
Per GamesIndustry.biz, the first week of sales for Scarlet and Violet (at least physically, as Nintendo does not share digital sales) are 25 percent bigger than those of Sword and Shield, 70 percent bigger than the Diamond and Pearl remakes and 56 percent bigger than this year’s other big Pokémon offering, Arceus.
Violet accounted for 52 percent of these total sales, while Scarlet accounted for 42 percent. The final six percent was made up by the Dual Pack that includes both games.
The games debuted in the top two places in the UK boxed sales charts for the week ending 20th November.
The remainder of the top 10 were made up of FIFA 23, God of War Ragnarök, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, the Pokémon Scarlet and Violet Dual Pack, Horizon Forbidden West, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Nintendo Switch Sports and Sonic Frontiers.
In Eurogamer’s Pokémon Scarlet and Violet review, Lottie called it an “interesting reworking of the traditional Pokémon gameplay”, but noted it is let down by “lifeless environments and graphics”.
“If more time and polish had been applied to Scarlet and Violet, then they could have lived up to their ambition and been the expansive world many fans, myself included, have dreamed of,” she wrote. “Yet the Pokémon series has a schedule to follow and it waits for no Slowpoke.”
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