Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl set to become second most successful Switch launch in Japan
A shining example of brilliant sales.
Trent Cannon 
Image via The Pokémon Company
It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone out there that a Pokémon game has sold well, but it is still surprising exactly how well the latest remaster from the series has performed. We expect big numbers from the series, but we don’t think anyone saw this coming.
Within the first three days after launching on November 19, Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl had sold nearly 1.4 million units combined in Japan alone. This would make them the second biggest Switch launch in the country, just behind Animal Crossing: New Horizons, released in March 2020. This number only includes physical sales data gathered by Famitsu over the first three days after the games’ launch, so the actual number is likely to be much higher when digital sales are released.
It also looks like the remakes are pushing Switch sales also, with around 168,000 consoles being sold in Japan during the week of Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl’s release. This is almost double the 87,000 units sold in the previous week, bringing the total number of consoles sold to just over 22 million in Japan. This number includes the Switch Lite and OLED models in their figures.
There haven’t been any officially released numbers for sales outside of Japan, but safe to say it is a good time to be a Pokémon fan.
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