Ahead of their November release, Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon are already becoming huge trend setters for Nintendo after topping the charts on the eShop with the new demo and topping another chart.
According to IGN both Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon have become the most pre-ordered games ever for Nintendo. That's some feat considering that the Big 'N' has had some of the biggest and best-selling franchises throughout the history of gaming.
The report states that the demo for both the upcoming Pokemon titles has exceeded 3.5 million downloads. Pre-orders for the games have also been on a steep incline, and IGN points to charts that Nintendo CEO Tatsumi Kimishima showed to investors that reveal that the pre-order status for both Sun and Moon have had higher figures over a longer time than the previous Pokemon Omega Ruby and Pokemon Alpha Sapphire.
Unfortunately, we don't get actual numbers on the pre-order figures, but the first image shows that over a longer period of time the pre-orders for Sun and Moon have been on a steady climb in Japan, compared to a front-loaded pre-order surge that happened right before the release of Pokemon Omega Ruby and Pokemon Alpha Sapphire.
In the United States, the two new titles have completely trumped the previous gen Pokemon games by a fairly significant margin (however, without an actual percentage or SKU count there is no way to gauge just how big an entire gray bar's worth of pre-orders compare between the titles).
In Europe the game is even more significant than the US, showing both longer periods of pre-order sales at higher rates for Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon compared to Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire.
IGN points out that the last two Pokemon games were the third highest grossing titles on the Nintendo 3DS, selling 13.18 million copies. The top of the herd is Pokemon X and Y, which have managed to move more than 15.64 million copies for the Nintendo 3DS.
Combined with the popularity of Pokemon Go, Nintendo has managed to keep the 20-year-old franchise alive and well with the help of the Pokemon Company and Game Freak. It looks like, based on pre-orders alone, Pokemon Sun and Moon will be the biggest selling games in the series yet.
I do wonder how much of that is being influenced by the current surge of popularity by Pokemon Go? Reports from a few months back showed that the mobile app's market spread actually became infectious enough to cause consumers to start picking up older Pokemon games for the DS and 3DS to catch up on the series and possibly explore the older games due to Pokemon Go being so much fun.
Of course, pre-orders only tell part of a story. There's still the possibility that the sales could taper off quickly after the initial opening day. A lot of the tail-end sales will be dependent on word of mouth and whether or not Pokemon Sun and Moon will live up to the hype. So far, based on the popularity of the demos, it appears as if the new games are living up to the hype.
Pokemon Sun and Moon are due for release on November 19th in North America and November 23rd in Europe.
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