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Pokémon Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl is the second biggest boxed game launch of 2021 | UK Boxed Charts

Bodomism

Banned
It's another blockbuster launch for Pokémon this week, with Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl taking the top two positions in the UK charts.

The remakes of the classic DS titles are comfortably the biggest Switch game launches of the year, beating Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury -- in fact, Brilliant Diamond achieves that alone, without even counting Pearl sales. Brilliant Diamond takes the No.1 position, followed by Shining Pearl at No.2, while the double pack featuring both games lands at No.9.

The Pokémon games combined are the second biggest boxed game launch of the year, behind FIFA 22 but ahead of Call of Duty: Vanguard
 
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The profitability of these Pokémon games must be huge. Does Nintendo disclose how much The Pokémon Company makes a year?
 

Banjo64

cumsessed
Nintendo have ridiculous power. Pearl alone has already outsold Dread’s 7 week total.
 
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Kokoloko85

Member
Gamefreak, EA and Rockstar are amongst the richest games companies but are the laziest. 1 day Ill play the Pokemon game I deserve
 

EDMIX

Member
It has nothing to do with “lazy” and more to do with wanting to make profit.

Agreed, was just about to say this.

Lazy simply has nothing to do with such big companies, maybe a small business by 1 person can be called this lol, a massive company....such a concept is not really applicable. They spend big money, to make big risk to move massive units on many, many platforms. I'd argue of all the companies here, its Nintendo playing it a bit more safe as those titles are coming out on 1 system, not some shit like 7 lol So massive risk is involved with such massive AAA titles.

Business wise, if I had to pick the safest route if we can even call such a concept "lazy" it would always be Nintendo. Put out a remake or remaster at full price on 1 system? That sounds like winner to me folks lol No radical new systems causing bugs, no 7 systems to worry about optimization lol

Maybe greediest is better. They have the funds and resources to make amazing games but decide for the minimum recently

Its really hard to say. The only greed i really see to where not much risk exist would be what Rockstar did, I can't even say what EA or Activision put out was a 100% safe, lazy, greed type of thing as putting out those games on so many systems, BF and COD with many modes, BF with such a massive player count and largest maps in BF history on top of Portal mode, a thing we've just never seen before in a MP title like this which would have bugs within itself, I can't really, really say they played it safe for greed.

Ubisoft easily played it the most safe out of the big 3rd party, Rockstar could have done a simply port, took some risk doing a more remake like approach, but the greed clearly kicks in with them greenlighting a release of a single player game which they clearly see has tons of issues. They just wanted that fall release. So I'd say there is levels to to this. Its hard to say with EA and Activision what the right approach can be to such massive titles in terms of budgets, modes, scale, complexity etc as we don't have much comparison as even Halo by a giant like MS is releasing in parts, missing tons of features etc

Maybe at massive AAA levels with many modes, features, scale online, its just not a cake walk and you are bound to have tons of fuck ups on 7 platforms lol Notice the more platforms and the more different the game then the last, the more issues.

Maybe that is why Sony and Nintendo can make it look like a fucking breeze. Who knows.
 

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
Maybe greediest is better. They have the funds and resources to make amazing games but decide for the minimum recently
That’s exactly what it is, “lazy” means devs are not doing their job but thats not really the case, the company behind the devs wants to make money as much as possible without spending a lot.
 

EDMIX

Member
That’s exactly what it is, “lazy” means devs are not doing their job but thats not really the case, the company behind the devs wants to make money as much as possible without spending a lot.

Agreed. So I don't know if its just trying to get those games on so many platforms to be cross gen, as we saw the same thing with BF4 and COD Ghost, I don't think the team is just like "ah fuck it" lol, I just think they are being over worked, having to do a bunch of new shit, on more platforms while trying to maintain.

I don't know the budgets for any of those projects so I won't rush to judgement, but I feel its very likely they are not funding what is really needed to have a smooth launch.

Rockstar being the worst here as many amazing talented transfer and or port teams exist that could have done the GTA Trilogy remake thing, then again for all we know with more time Grove Street Games could have actually made a normal title too, so who knows with that mess.

That being said, some people are going to be fucking triggered that BF 2042 is number 3 on that list lol
 

levyjl1988

Banned
I doubt Game Freak will ever shake off its negative stigma and reception. Pokemon games will never reach the imagination of the many players that wish it to be. The only thing even close to showcasing the Pokemon world is the anime.
 

Ryu Kaiba

Member
I was considering picking it up myself but the saw some footage of the old:

Pikachu uses thunder wave ...animation showing pokemon maybe paralyzed....dialogue explaining pokemon may be paralyzed...pokemon attempts attack .... pokemon is confirmed to be paralyzed...

And that turned me right off.

It all came flooding back and it wasn't worth the time.
If they removed all that type of bullshit the game would be an hour.

I'm just hoping another competent dev steps in with a similar competitor and eats their lunch. and I don't mean SMT or yokai watch I mean just make pokemon in everything but the name.
 
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reksveks

Member
Find it interesting that cod and bf have the exact same physical sales split for thier first week (fc6 wasn't too different)
 

NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
Every time a new Pokémon game comes out, I wonder what the author of this book thinks.

I’m confused, though - do UK boxed sales count or not? Lots of conflicting opinions around here :messenger_winking:
 

reksveks

Member
Every time a new Pokémon game comes out, I wonder what the author of this book thinks.

I’m confused, though - do UK boxed sales count or not? Lots of conflicting opinions around here :messenger_winking:
if we want to be nuanced which typically Twitter and Neogaf typically doesn't want to be; it's matters if you care about physical sales and its possible impact on brick and mortars retailers although i do wonder how much of their revenue/profit is new games sales, how much is used games and how much is other factors.

For platform holders splits, physical sales aren't that important but slightly more important for Nintendo as for FY22/Q1-Q2: digital was 45.6% of software sales. The important thing to remember is there is a difference between the each user base based on UX and platform holders priorities.
 
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Tams

Gold Member
I was considering picking it up myself but the saw some footage of the old:

Pikachu uses thunder wave ...animation showing pokemon maybe paralyzed....dialogue explaining pokemon may be paralyzed...pokemon attempts attack .... pokemon is confirmed to be paralyzed...

And that turned me right off.

It all came flooding back and it wasn't worth the time.
If they removed all that type of bullshit the game would be an hour.

I'm just hoping another competent dev steps in with a similar competitor and eats their lunch. and I don't mean SMT or yokai watch I mean just make pokemon in everything but the name.
No one will.

And as long as people try to replicate Pokémon, they are going to fail. There's that Toki something or whatever. It's bland and lacks imagination.
 

Bodomism

Banned
Pokemon brand is too strong and somehow many people thought Switch would fail even with Pokemon games on the system lol.

2010 - Black and White = 15.64M
2011 - Black 2 and White 2 = 8.52M
2013 - X and Y = 16.58M
2014 - Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire = 14.46M
2016 - Sun and Moon = 16.27M
2017 - Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon = 9.04M
2018 - Let's GO Pikachu/Eeve = 13.83M
2019 - Sword and Shield = 22.64M
2021 - Brilliant Diamond and Shinning Pearl = ??
2022 - Legend Arceus = ??
 

Kenpachii

Member
Pokemon brand is too strong and somehow many people thought Switch would fail even with Pokemon games on the system lol.

2010 - Black and White = 15.64M
2011 - Black 2 and White 2 = 8.52M
2013 - X and Y = 16.58M
2014 - Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire = 14.46M
2016 - Sun and Moon = 16.27M
2017 - Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon = 9.04M
2018 - Let's GO Pikachu/Eeve = 13.83M
2019 - Sword and Shield = 22.64M
2021 - Brilliant Diamond and Shinning Pearl = ??
2022 - Legend Arceus = ??

That's actually less then i thought it would be, specially when u consider lots of double dipping because of selling 2 versions of the same game.
 
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Esppiral

Member
And people wonder why game freak puts little to no effort in their games, pokemon fans have so low standards that they don't even bother.
 

Bodomism

Banned
That's actually less then i thought it would be, specially when u consider lots of double dipping because of selling 2 versions of the same game.
You need to consider that those games were exclusive to a single platform for each installment.

We could potentially see around 70 million copies of pokemon games(Mainline and Remake) for Nintendo Switch alone.
 
Pokemon brand is too strong and somehow many people thought Switch would fail even with Pokemon games on the system lol.

2010 - Black and White = 15.64M
2011 - Black 2 and White 2 = 8.52M
2013 - X and Y = 16.58M
2014 - Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire = 14.46M
2016 - Sun and Moon = 16.27M
2017 - Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon = 9.04M
2018 - Let's GO Pikachu/Eeve = 13.83M
2019 - Sword and Shield = 22.64M
2021 - Brilliant Diamond and Shinning Pearl = ??
2022 - Legend Arceus = ??

Legend Arceus will be a monster, it will sell Zelda-like numbers
 

onQ123

Member
No.6 Spiderman: MILES MORALES

That's crazy Sony must have dropped off some more PS5s or that product placement at the end of the new Spiderman trailer worked
 

Ryu Kaiba

Member
No one will.

And as long as people try to replicate Pokémon, they are going to fail. There's that Toki something or whatever. It's bland and lacks imagination.
It can be done. All that's needed is too let smart Pokemon fans on the team. The ones whom have an imagination for what their dream pokemon game would be. Then just replace things like "Pokeballs" with "Summon stones" or something like that. If it looked sounded and felt like a Pokemon game in the trailers but just with vastly more ambition and effort people would be intrigued.
 

Tams

Gold Member
It can be done. All that's needed is too let smart Pokemon fans on the team. The ones whom have an imagination for what their dream pokemon game would be. Then just replace things like "Pokeballs" with "Summon stones" or something like that. If it looked sounded and felt like a Pokemon game in the trailers but just with vastly more ambition and effort people would be intrigued.
I really doubt that.

For all its faults, Pokémon has the aesthetic and collection down to a T. It's cute and it's fun to collect monsters. Then on top of that in terms of video games (and card/table top games), they were the first to do it and therefore have a massive mindshare.

Perhaps one day something really good (that mainly looks good and cute - so no Digimon) will emerge as an alternative combined with a collapse in the popularity of Pokémon. I can't see that happening any time soon though.
 
Not gonna lie ILCA did a decent job of remaking these games. Just a HD version of the originals isn't that pretty much what most of us wanted on the Switch anyways seeing as S&S didn't work out too well.
 

Ozriel

M$FT
Every time a new Pokémon game comes out, I wonder what the author of this book thinks.

I’m confused, though - do UK boxed sales count or not? Lots of conflicting opinions around here :messenger_winking:

Boxed sales are of relevance in this case since the discourse in the OP is mainly comparing it with other Switch titles. Also, I’m pretty sure Nintendo fans lean more physical than digital. Or at least have a higher physical split than the other two console makers.

Probably due to High resale values of used games and limited internal and MicroSD space.
 

Tams

Gold Member
When it comes to monster collecting Megami Tensei was the one who did it first.
And I still don't know what that is. But I do know what Pokémon (and even Digimon and Yugio) are.

Funny that. It's almost like just being the first isn't enough. That you have to have some, like say, very cute, easy to like characters.
 

hemo memo

Gold Member
The game is developed by ILCA but they did a fantastic at coping Gamefreak lazy design. An AAA RPG in 2021 with fixed camera and without voice acting… for fuck sake.
 
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Belthazar

Member
And that's why they keep doing the bare minimum... Why put resources in anything but marketing, when the games sell well regardless of scope and/or quality.
 
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