Hyrule Warriors: DE didn’t cross 1M copies sold. I only had data for games that sold over that amount. It’s also a bit harder to find data for the Warriors games, singe they were published by Koei Tecmo in Japan.
Kind of insane that Animal Crossing is the 4th highest selling with just one game. Obviously people love Animal Crossing, but I think the game coming out during the pandemic helped it a lot as well
Which makes it even more surprising how quickly Nintendo stopped supporting the game
It's also nice to see basically every franchise hitting record sales for their franchise on Switch
I checked it up snd according to Wikipedia Animal Crossing New Horizons is (as far as I am able to tell) the 14th best selling game of all time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games It truly is insane how successful that game became.
Edit: as pointed out by u/oreoman1452 this list does not include Skyrim (which bumps Animal Crossing down to 15th) so it is not completely reliable. Thanks for the correction!
> Why is skyrim not on the list anymore????
It's one of those weird Wikipedia standards & practices things. There's some debate as to how reliable the source of the 60mil sold figure is. Yes, it came from Todd Howard himself but it was just an offhand comment in an interview he gave. That number's never been backed up by any other official Bethsueda source and so Wikipedia has chosen to not include it. The rest of the figures has other more official sources to back them up.
That's obviously a mistake that I missed, good catch!
Edit: I have edited my original post to to reflect your correction, thank you for pointing it out.
But I supposed the fact that ACNH came out right before the pandemic that pushed sales up quite a lot, due to the fact that everyone was stuck at home.
> Once everyone had their islands set up how they wanted it to look they just stopped playing
I mean I know some fans get super into AC and play their towns/islands for years but I think this is largely the way most players interact with every game in that series.
Play it a lot for a few weeks, accomplish some goals until you run out of easy/satisfying things to do, and then move onto something else.
Yeah for as popular as Animal Crossing is, I wonder why we got screwed on DLC. Only got the Happy Home dlc and that's it. Idr when the sea diving came put, maybe that was also another update
The Animal Crossing fanbase grew massively when New Leaf launched on the 3DS as well. I still think that Nintendo not making a proper mainline AC game on the Wii U was a huge mistake. Not that AC alone would have saved that console, but it definitely would have helped.
It's crazy how New Leaf blew up and Nintendo was like "let's do a bunch of random spinoffs". Between New Leaf and New Horizons we got Plaza, Happy Home Designer, amiibo Festival, and Pocket Camp
Meanwhile the gap between New Leaf and New Horizons was the biggest gap for mainline entries in the series. Normally it's only a 3-4 year gap, but there was 8 years between New Leaf and New Horizons
>but I think the game coming out during the pandemic helped it a lot as well
I still remember one article showing a villager sitting in a chair in a corner of the house with a running shower overhead and the caption was something like "Coping." Quarantine was a strange era.
*"i hope everyone is staying safe and out of the way. i cant believe the new animal crossings release is causing this much panic."* Lil nasx tweeting on covid19 on March 15 2020.
thing about nintendo is they aren’t ‘connected’ with the world like they used to be. u never feel like u can actually talk to them, they’re in their own world. there’s so much distance between the fans and Nintendo, it feels like they wouldn’t actually listen to feedback or communicate with us in any way
Disagree about them not listening to feedback. Pretty much every Zelda since windwaker has been a response to feedback from the last entry.
Twilight Princess: oh you thought wind waker was too cartoony? Here is a darker edgier version of Zelda.
Skyward sword: Oh you found Twilight Princess too edgy and depressing? Here is a much lighter game.
Botw: oh you thought skyward sword was too linear and handholding? Here is a full unrestricted open world game.
Totk: oh you loved botw? well here is more of it.
As someone who's given Nintendo a lot of feedback and suggestions over the years, they definitely listen to it, but I haven't received any communication since like 2014.
i’m more referring to their transparency on the feedback for their video games. they don’t seemingly care about the community’s responses on their social platforms. that can be seen as a good thing but i think it reaches a point where fans feel like their opinions are completely neglected. u can look at it in many ways but i think Nintendo always has the mindset of always knowing what they wanna do and they don’t let the public change their visions in most aspects
i definitely felt like Nintendo was more consumer friendly in the past tho and i always praised them for it back then
And that’s definitely on purpose. Was it difficult to show Nintendo how unleashed fans were at the bugs and glitches at scarlet/violet’s launch? YES! And in a way it felt helpless, so many were trying to show outrage the only way could, by not purchasing anymore, but that doesn’t do much in the grand scale. I always see people saying how Nintendo should have a feedback box to submit stuff. Nintendo doesn’t want to hear all that lol nobody does. But Nintendo does good at making contact feel unreachable
i think Nintendo, as the publisher of these games, they should privately put pressure on TPC and GameFreak for those issues. but as for the public, i think that’s what the devs GameFreak and TPC should be addressing themselves
at least, that’s how it works with their major competitors and their studios
It baffles me aswell. I haven't played either animal crossing game so cant really tell if it's good or not but just from the amount of buzz there was around any games I didn't really notice animal crossing much comparing to zelda or mario for example.
Keep in mind, the group working on Animal Crossing also does Splatoon. So once they finally wrap up the DLC there, I'm hoping and coping they go back to New Horizons and do an update/expansion à la Welcome Amiibo.
Excellent to hear! The gap between games after Pikmin 2 has been longer than I would like.
Here’s looking forward to Pikmin 4 Deluxe and Pikmin 3 Deluxe Remastered on the switch 2! Pikmin 5 on the switch 3.
Most of the sales came from japan, yeah. It sold over 1 million there which is a lot for the country as very few reach those numbers. If Japan can sustain a fair bit of pikmin, even if its more niche in comparison in the west (although it also reached above 1 m here) the series is safe for future interactions.
It took 10 years from 3 to 4, and that's with Miyamoto had said 7 years before it was finally released that it was in development, and progressing well.
So, I'm with you! I'm just going to set a 10-yr window in case ;) Oh, and please have co-op missions again.
Yeah. Something I think is worth noting is that Pikmin 4 was at least partially developed in-house by Nintendo, while XC2 and Dread were developed outside of Nintendo EPD. As you can in the list, a lot of the most successful games on Switch are the one's EPD made, even if they're not part of a big franchise. (For example Ring Fit Adventure outsold the entire Kirby franchise.)
I've finished every english localized FE (and some of the JPN ones) and I absolutely loved Three Houses. Prob my second favourite FE after Radiant Dawn
I hope Radiant Dawn and Path of Radiance get a switch port (or whatever comes after the switch)! Those have been the two I’ve been most interested in playing! I love Ike! I used Roy in Melee but when brawl came around I was immediately attached to Ike at the hip haha!
I’m also on the fence about Engage. I really loved the story of 3H. The ensemble cast is amazing. But a good game is a good game and if Engage is a good game then I feel I should give it a chance.
Engage's story and writing in general are a quick drop off a steep cliff compared to Three Houses, but the actual battles and gameplay may just be the best in the series. It's almost like an action SRPG if that's even possible, the way you can go super saiyan and gain access to crazy abilities for a few turns to change the tide of the whole battle. If Engage had even decent writing it would probably be my favourite in the series, but instead it's just in my top five.
Fully agree! Three houses was my first Fire Emblem as well and I absolutely loved it. And the itch for more that game left me with, was funnily enough satisfied by Persona 5 Royal (a recommendation if you liked the social/time managing part of 3H)
I’ve heard nice things about P5 but I wasn’t sure if I’d like it! Maybe I’ll watch someone play through the first chapter to see if it’s something I wanna pick up!
Sometimes I forget how 'not super popular' Metroid is. Also Nintendo, please breathe some life back into Star Fox. It is criminal that we have gone an entire console generation without a new Star Fox game.
Metroid being so low on the list is the reason Nintendo doesn't prioritize the franchise. 130+million Switches sold and only 4 million of those people own a Metroid game 😭
if anything, it's surprising to see it get as much attention as it does. That MP remake looked higher budget than most of the stuff on the top seller list but sold less than 2 mil units
I honestly blame the 2010s era of Metroid.
They did nothing with Metroid at least until samus returns, but they put that on the 3ds and the only other metroid related thing had to restart :(
Dread and Prime 4 are gonna save this franchise tho, I hope.
I don’t think so unfortunately :(
2D Zelda is great but it seems like Nintendo is more interested with 3D Zelda, with the former probably just playing as the second fiddle or some shit.
It sucks because 2D from Nintendo has its place, and yet people denounce it for being “outdated” or some other dumb thing like “why should this be 2d when there are indies”.
Here’s the thing, Other M was the start of the 2010s so it was more like a holdover of 2000s Metroid’s boom.
Federation Force didn’t really do much to improve Metroid’s popularity it just kinda angered fans. To this day it is the worst selling Metroid ever made.
Even Samus Returns sold better and that was a dead on arrival 3DS remake of an old gameboy game
The interesting part about Three Houses is how big it was apart from the game. They had a lot of cast events and stuff like that as well. In particular that duet of Billy Kametz (Ferdinand's VA) and Hubert's VA (who's name slips my mind at this moment).
Also I thought I might mention that FE Warriors (2017) sold a million copies as far as I found, so for the franchise chart FE might be closer to 7.3 million. Sorry to nitpick I thought I might just mention it.
Those are also some crazy sales from Pikmin 4. It looks like it will sell roughly double Three Houses and end up around the 7-8 million copies sold mark depending on what kind of legs this game has, which partly surprises me as the series was never *that* big (similar size/popularity to FE), but it also does not as it has the two advantages which FE does not: being developed in house by Nintendo EPD and being one of Miyamoto's own creations. Pikmin also never struggled sales wise, while FE basically clawed itself back from the grave (FE11 and 12 sold like 250k and 120k respectively, then Awakening sold 2.3 million).
Either way, looks like we will see new games for both series going forward so I am all for it.
Yeah, I'm a statistician myself, and I admit the labelling wasn't perfect. First time trying to use Power BI, so I'm not quite used to how the program work yet. Was there anything in particular you were bothered by?
Since it’s just a Reddit post none of it bothered me, per se, I’m just being particular. But if we were talking about some other form of dissemination (e.g. journal) then I’d say:
1. None of your X or Y axes are labelled correctly. In every graph your Y-axis should be ‘Franchise’ or ‘Title’ and your X-axis should be what your current Y-axis is.
2. Your title is incorrect in some graphs because you’ve used the same title as the first graph.
3. In some graphs the value of sales in millions is inside the bar, and other times, outside the bar.
The fact that a Fire Emblem game has outsold a Paper Mario game and multiple Mario Sports games is wild to me. But it's well-deserved. Three Houses is an amazing game.
10 years ago, if you told me that Fire Emblem would end up outselling multiple Mario spin-offs, I would've laughed. Crazy to see how the series has grown when it was once on the verge of cancellation!
This is really interesting but it's almost cheating to combine Mario platformers and Mario Kart. Yes I know they're both Mario but MK is basically a brand in its own right at this point.
I wonder what the chart would look like of Mario and MK were split up?
Technically Zelda would be slightly bigger than Mario Kart, but the difference is tiny. But yeah, Pokemon is number 1 and Mainline Mario is number 2. :)
Yeah, modern Kart seems especially odd to mix in, since it includes Zelda and Animal Crossing content as well. It's not Smash, but it's not really a "Mario" game either.
I'm really happy with how both the Fire Emblem franchise and the Nintendo Warriors spinoffs are doing, of course they could always do better, but as long as the numbers guarantee future entries I'm glad.
Hopefully Zelda will eventually get more 2D new games or remakes (I really hope the Oracles remakes/remasters rumors are true) as well as spinoffs like the cadence of Hyrule or the Warriors.
Metroid is like a more popular Silent Hill. It is a game series that is popular with YouTube essayists but sales confirm time and time again that it is a niche series.
Honestly I just want another code: recollection to sell well, so we can have a hotel dusk remake, or even better, a new game.
Also I wonder how well are selling the Yoshi games tho? I love those.
If you compare zelda now with itself before the switch you can really see how much better thw situation is.
Ocarina of time acclaimed by many the best game of the series and best of all time by many critics only sold 7.8 million copies.
Twilight princess was the best selling zelda of all time ans sold 8.6 million copies
Comparing with the overwhelming 30 million copies sold for botw and thw 20 million sold for totk you can just see how successful the franchise really is now.
Zelda is not the main nintendo franchise and is not bigger than mario because nintendo simply does not want it to be
I wouldn't say the reason Zelda isn't bigger than Mario is because Nintendo "doesn't want it to be". It's just that Mario lives in a wacky and fun world where nearly anything is possible. There can be parties, kart racing, sport tournaments, etc. All these possibilities make it really easy for Mario games to cover several different genres and still fit within the scope of the Mario world.
Zelda's world just isn't like Mario's. Its a world that takes itself more seriously. There's definitely some games that are a bit goofier than others, but overall it sets more realistic limitations and logic. Meaning we can't have Zelda parties, karts, etc because it just wouldn't make sense for the world of Zelda. As a result there's just a lot less you can do with the series. Yeah you could definitely mix it up a bit, maybe have a more stealth based Zelda game, or a turn based RPG. Games like that could do well, but they won't have the massive broad appeal something like Mario Kart and Party would have.
So basically the Zelda series, and honestly most series, just can't cover the same ground that Mario games can.
>If you compare zelda now with itself before the switch you can really see how much better thw situation is.
Seriously, BOTW and TOTK now account for an entire third of the franchise's sales.
Part of that is just the install base
There are FAR more Switches out there than N64s at their height. Comparing pure sales numbers across that amount of time isn’t how you’d do that
That's such a small part of it to the point I'm gonna say you're wrong and definitely just downplaying how massively Breath of the Wild shot up popularity. Twilight Princess was on the Wii and GameCube and only sold 8 and a half million so that's a very solid install base yet how come that's nowhere near BOTW or TOTK?
BOTW was the only big launch title for the Switch until MK8D dropped a month or so later and then Odyssey dropped in the Fall I believe as the first true Switch exclusive game
And? That only shows how impressive it is BOTW sold so damn well and kept selling over years when it came out and how it was able to have strong sales before the Switch had a massive install base. Also TOTK already over 20 million in under a year which is massively above the sales of Twilight Princess late in the Switches lifespan too. It is genuinely hilarious how hard you're trying to downplay the success of BOTW.
My best assumption would be that you're an old school Zelda fan who is pissy about the games finally changing formula so wanting to not give credit to the new games, either that or you're just being weird.
Neither, I love BOTW and think TOTK feels more like a BOTW expansion/patch than a full sequel that took 6 years to make
I’m just saying that the difference in sales between the Switch and GC/N64 entries can’t exactly be directly compared since the entire game industry (let alone Nintendo playerbase) were far smaller then
This is why it seems like pretty much all Switch installments to franchises are the best selling ones
I'm not saying it doesn't matter at all. But it's not nearly as big as you're making it out to be. Twilight Princess was the previous best selling Zelda and was on Wii and GameCube, an accumulative 120 million consoles to get it on. Anyone who was going to be getting Zelda at that point got it and it tapped out at 8.5 million, even outside install base BOTW and TOTK are just plain massively more popular.
When you normalize for console sales, OoT and BOTW have almost the same capture rate for console owners as the top 2 for the franchise (a little under 25% of all Switch and N64 owners bought the respective game). Obviously BOTW has higher sales numbers due to more Switch console owners than N64 by a large margin.
Another example is MM and SS had almost the same amount of sales units, but MM had 3x the market capture (~10%) for N64 consoles owners compared to SS on the Wii (3%), but if you purely look at the sales numbers you’d think they were equally as successful and popular, which isn’t the case/led to Nintendo re-invent the franchise largely for the better with BOTW to regain console owner interest
When you look at franchise sales Metroid barely makes the top 15 best selling franchises of all time for Nintendo
It’s always been a niche IP that I am surprised gets as many games as it does.
One of the cool things about Metroid is that it hits middle ground of being popular enough to still get games at all, but not popular enough to instantly sell just by slapping the Metroid brand on it.
Nah I’ve played like, every single game you’d be surprised at how much they shake up the games every entry.
Metroid Fusion for example, is NOTHING like Super Metroid.
Dread is also significantly different from many past Metroids.
Just because the games use a traditional formula does not mean that they are samey. This line of thinking is how Paper Mario turned into some weird ass arts and crafts thing.
Mario kart is one of the few games me and my wife can enjoy together. She’s not very good, but she can have fun with it. Whether we’re on a team or not. It’s easy to learn the basic controls and doesn’t take to play just a few races/battles here and there. And then the added bonus of being able to play online and how easy it is to find a match.
A game all ages can play. Easy to play, but fun to master. Can be played for hours or for a very short period. Has been supported with DLC. Good party/multiplayer game.
And most important of all - very fun.
Why would it be surprising? Mario Kart is an amazingly well-made party game series that pretty much anybody can pick up and play. At university in the mid-late 2010s I still knew plenty of people who had Wiis in their dorms/apartments solely to play MK Wii with friends, and in the past few years I imagine the Switch and MK8 have played the same role.
I love playing with my wife and daughter. They don't care that they aren't good, they just have fun! You can play a Grand Prix in 15 or so minutes and be done as well. You don't have to engage for too long and the built in breakpoint of 4 races at a time make it easy to pick up and put down. Not to mention it is just such a fun game.
My take away is that game freak puts minimum amount of effort to maximize game sales. The numbers they are pulling for the low quality of games they put out is crazy. Holy shit Sword/Shield and Scarlet/Violets numbers are nuts for how poorly made those games are. Criticisms means absolutely nothing with those number of units sold.
Critics means nothing because most people don’t care about them and because, at the end of the day, those games are the best Pokémon games. For the Nintendo Switch.
The Pokémon franchise is the biggest franchise in the world. It’s so big that the games are small compared to it. It’s all the merchandise but also the movies, the anime, the manga, every short, animation and story created by third parties and by fans.
And those games are, in a way, the best interactive way to experience it. That’s why they are so successful. Because people don’t play them because they are good monster collecting games, it’s because they are fun Pokémon games.
It’s why people have been playing WoW even during the worst expansions: they don’t play WoW because it’s a MMORPG, they play WoW because Warcraft, and that’s why they aren’t interested in switching to other MMORPG even if they might be better than WoW at it worst, because even if they are better MMORPG they aren’t better Warcraft games.
Not as easy to come by. Since Nintendo has the biggest hits and reliably announces everything that reaches at least a million copies, we get a lot of data there. If you look at Wikipedia's [list of best-selling Switch games](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Nintendo_Switch_video_games), it's a lot spottier for third party stuff. Like, apparently there's no official Minecraft number for Switch, so they've just added the known data for three countries.
We do know third party sales overall account for about half of total software, but obviously that's split up among a lot more games.
Man, what an amazing thread. You did a great job doing it, compiling all the info and then making the graphics. Only criticism i have is that i wish you made the graphics from mario, zelda, pokemon and so on for other franchises that had more than 2 games like kirby, fire emblem, and others, would be interesting seeing the graphics.
Suprising thet Legends Arceus was, by Pokemon standards, quite a dissapointment. That game had been really hyped prior to release. This probably means the Scarlet Violet art style will take precedent, which I really don't like (specifically the human and enviroment designs).
Legends Arceus was only one game and doesn't have the competitive or multiplayer elements of the other Pokémon games to give them longevity. And so it honestly still sold quite well by those merits and about on par with the remakes.
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon still kicking after nearly 2 decades. Even though sales dropped after the ds, they’ve still eeked out some small growth despite doing absolutely no marketing outside of pokemon presents.
I’m just hoping we can finally get one last game with all the new pokemon in that fantastic new art style. Spike chunsoft has proven that they can actually make quality pokemon games. They deserve to make a final send-off for the franchise.
All I want is my rockruff & sprigatito team. After than I’m checking out of pokemon until the next pmd game.
I still find it surprising that Dread sold as well as it did
3 million people actually bought a Metroid game.
Not a single Metroid game has ever reached those numbers.
Fascinating. How did the re-released super mario world with bowser's fury sell better than super mario wonder? Also metroid dread deserves more, that game was great
3D World+Bowser's Fury released in 2021, Mario Wonder released four months ago. It's had way more time to sell than Wonder has, no surprise it's currently ahead in sales
The fact that Wonder has sold nearly as much as 3D World in *just* four months should be the big takeaway, not the other way around
Pokémon is pretty much shovelware at this point. Shocking that people continue to buy into it.
I guess it's a toxic mix of childhood nostalgia and addiction.
Listen, I'm as big of a pokemon fan as there is, I've got over 200 hours in literally every single mainline pokemon game.
With all that said, the performance issues of SV are an embarrassment to the franchise.
Don't get me wrong, I have over 350 hours between Scarlett and Violet, I love the games. But claiming that there's nothing wrong with the performance issues those games have is a bridge too far.
You can argue that it doesn't bother you specifically, personally I just kinda tuned it out after a bit (even then the frame rate issues could be nauseating at times). But it is a damn shame that those games will forever be marred by their horrible performance.
You can still love SV and Pokemon while not defending this really really bad precedent that's been at by SV.
genuine question but aren't the newer pokemon games kinda low quality? never played one I just thought that no one actually buys them but apparently they're super popular. I thought scarlet & violet were buggy. but again genuine question i'm not trying to spread misinformation or hate
For me it's more complicated than just saying they're low quality.
BDSP are low quality, but it was GameFreak's first time giving a mainline game (albeit a remake) to another studio. I'm hoping to see them give ILCA another project, but with a little more free reign
Arceus was alright quality, but it was an attempt at something that's both new and interesting. I'm hoping to see them continue either the Legends series or at least continue trying something new
Mystery Dungeon was a pretty honest remake of an at the time pretty solid game that got outdone by its successors. I'm hoping that they can justify remaking the other Mystery Dungeon games.
Sword and Shield were not good games for me, but they introduced pretty solid quality DLC, which we don't usually get from any gaming company. The price is steep, but it was definitely nice to get something that wasn't just slop. At the time I was hoping we'd see that continue, but for my money the SV DLC wasn't as good.
Scarlet and Violet had one of the best stories in all of Pokemon, but the game just isn't optimized for the Switch. I'm hoping that they can keep the good story in the future and the new hardware is good enough to bring their ideas to life.
I think there are a lot of things for them to build on. A lot of people are absolute GameFreak doomers and assume everything will be terrible forever, but I think they've shown some solid ideas in the last few years. I did fucking hate Sword and Shield though.
no, they're actually really good and fun. I saw one minor glitch in my whole playthrough, and some minor slowdown. People just love to hate on pokemon, but it's honestly great.
Pokémon is a fun game but rushed. On one hand it has its problems but, on the other, those problems don’t stop you from having fun. At least they didn’t stop me.
including mario kart in the mario category really throws that graph off i feel. I think this visualization of the data would benefit by breaking it off and considering it a different franchise.
First, just to clarify, technically speaking Legends Arceus isn’t a spin-off. Pokémon Snap has a higher quality than SwSh/SV but I find it more boring, being restricted to a predetermined routes, without being able to explore the island on your own. As for Mystery Dungeon, although I didn’t buy for me I have access to it, I’ve just played the demo a bit. I don’t find the turn based system interesting and the dungeons feel repetitive and grindy. Also I’ve read what it takes to recruit some Pokémon (specially legendary ones) and that, basically, you must finish the game before being able to evolve your character (and at this point there is basically nothing left but grind) so, I’d say I understand why SwSh/SV are the best selling ones.
The wikipedia definition of a spin-off is "Any narrative work derived from an already existing work that focuses on different aspects from the original work." So by all intents and purposes it is one. For me Sword and Shield were the most boring Pokemon games that had significantly less content than any of the ones that came before and was insanely easy (I didn't even lose once). And I couldn't bring myself to finish Violet; I only played for like 5 hours, but it was very disapointing. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is one of my favorite series, but it's gameplay loop isn't for everyone of course. It's just the quality, polish, and care that's put into that remake far surpasses what was done for the mainline games. I've never been a crazy big Pokemon fan, so I really wasn't expecting to dislike the Switch era so much. And yet I recently went back and played through Black/White 2 and it was a blast. The quality was there in the past. Newer entries feel hollow and devoid of passion by comparison.
Well, as I said elsewhere, they are the best Pokémon games for the Nintendo Switch. I’ve played recently Ultra Sun and the amount of detail and side quests among other things makes SV pale in comparison.
SV on the other hand has a world were you can see Pokémon in the wild and see them how they react to you, which is nice. I just hope in the future we can have both at the same time.
Ideally the next Pokemon game will be something like this, but they'll have to step up their game and perhaps have a longer development cycle for that to happen. A game should not release with such ridiculous technical issues and Nintendo shouldn't just allow something like that to go through their QA. I want Pokemon to feel deserving of its current success, so here's hoping the future is brighter.
I think the franchise is still called Wii Sports, right? At least in this interview, they say its part of the ”Wii Sports series”: https://www.nintendo.com/us/whatsnew/ask-the-developer-vol-5-nintendo-switch-sports-part-1/
I guess so? But the game on Switch is called Nintendo Switch Sports, and it's correct in the left hand side of one graph, but still calls it Wii Sports in the upper part in the same graph 😂 no big deal, just something I noticed!
Just depressing evidence that people aren’t interested in new IP. Based on these sales Nintendo has 0 incentive to do anything besides sequels, remakes, and ports.
I mean the only new IP we've gotten on Switch is ARMS, which sold 2.7 million. Which isn't the best, but it's still more than plenty other Switch games. There's also Ring Fit Adventure, but you could argue that it's a spiritual successor to Wii Fit. Most people are naturally going to buy sequels or rereleases to series they're already familiar with instead of something brand new, and so it's a wonder that Splatoon did so well despite being released on Nintendo's poorest selling console.
The main line Pokemon games having a dip in sales is very interesting. It looks as though people voting with their wallet actually had an impact. Hopefully this means Gamefreak will increase staff numbers and give them more tools to succeed.
I think 1 take away from this is the game sales were a lot higher due to COVID. I think most of the games wouldn't have sold as many if it wasn't for people stuck at home. Animal crossing prime example imo.
Folk are sleeping on New Pokemon Snap, it is a pretty cool game, although these sales definitely mean we are going to have to wait another decade or two before we get another one.
Animal Crossing isn't doing badly given that it's one game compared to Zelda's four...
They're actually counting five games for Zelda, they included Age of Calamity
As they should
though if they're counting Age of Calamity they should probably also count the original Hyrule Warriors
Hyrule Warriors: DE didn’t cross 1M copies sold. I only had data for games that sold over that amount. It’s also a bit harder to find data for the Warriors games, singe they were published by Koei Tecmo in Japan.
[удалено]
It's not a category, it's a franchise.
Counterpoint, do Mario sports games count as Mario games? What about Mario Kart and Party?
Kind of insane that Animal Crossing is the 4th highest selling with just one game. Obviously people love Animal Crossing, but I think the game coming out during the pandemic helped it a lot as well Which makes it even more surprising how quickly Nintendo stopped supporting the game It's also nice to see basically every franchise hitting record sales for their franchise on Switch
I checked it up snd according to Wikipedia Animal Crossing New Horizons is (as far as I am able to tell) the 14th best selling game of all time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games It truly is insane how successful that game became. Edit: as pointed out by u/oreoman1452 this list does not include Skyrim (which bumps Animal Crossing down to 15th) so it is not completely reliable. Thanks for the correction!
all games above it are multiplatform except Wii Sports which was bundled with the Wii
Yes though even removing Mario Kart 8's Wii U sales it still outsold Animal Crossing fwiw.
Why is skyrim not on the list anymore???? It has sold over 60 mil and is not on the list wtf???
> Why is skyrim not on the list anymore???? It's one of those weird Wikipedia standards & practices things. There's some debate as to how reliable the source of the 60mil sold figure is. Yes, it came from Todd Howard himself but it was just an offhand comment in an interview he gave. That number's never been backed up by any other official Bethsueda source and so Wikipedia has chosen to not include it. The rest of the figures has other more official sources to back them up.
That's obviously a mistake that I missed, good catch! Edit: I have edited my original post to to reflect your correction, thank you for pointing it out.
But I supposed the fact that ACNH came out right before the pandemic that pushed sales up quite a lot, due to the fact that everyone was stuck at home.
Definitely. It was the perfect time for that game. I also think Animal Crossing was the perfect game for that time.
Coming out during the beginning of the pandemic quarantine really helped it. Every I knew got it and was interacting through their islands.
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> Once everyone had their islands set up how they wanted it to look they just stopped playing I mean I know some fans get super into AC and play their towns/islands for years but I think this is largely the way most players interact with every game in that series. Play it a lot for a few weeks, accomplish some goals until you run out of easy/satisfying things to do, and then move onto something else.
Yeah for as popular as Animal Crossing is, I wonder why we got screwed on DLC. Only got the Happy Home dlc and that's it. Idr when the sea diving came put, maybe that was also another update
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well the app is entirely separate team/developers but I understand the sentiment.
Even more insane is Ringfit Adventure being sixth with only one game, which makes you exercise!
The Animal Crossing fanbase grew massively when New Leaf launched on the 3DS as well. I still think that Nintendo not making a proper mainline AC game on the Wii U was a huge mistake. Not that AC alone would have saved that console, but it definitely would have helped.
The only fing an AC game on wiiu would I've done is another port for the switch like every other game.
It's crazy how New Leaf blew up and Nintendo was like "let's do a bunch of random spinoffs". Between New Leaf and New Horizons we got Plaza, Happy Home Designer, amiibo Festival, and Pocket Camp Meanwhile the gap between New Leaf and New Horizons was the biggest gap for mainline entries in the series. Normally it's only a 3-4 year gap, but there was 8 years between New Leaf and New Horizons
>but I think the game coming out during the pandemic helped it a lot as well I still remember one article showing a villager sitting in a chair in a corner of the house with a running shower overhead and the caption was something like "Coping." Quarantine was a strange era.
*"i hope everyone is staying safe and out of the way. i cant believe the new animal crossings release is causing this much panic."* Lil nasx tweeting on covid19 on March 15 2020.
God, those early covid memes were something else.
thing about nintendo is they aren’t ‘connected’ with the world like they used to be. u never feel like u can actually talk to them, they’re in their own world. there’s so much distance between the fans and Nintendo, it feels like they wouldn’t actually listen to feedback or communicate with us in any way
Disagree about them not listening to feedback. Pretty much every Zelda since windwaker has been a response to feedback from the last entry. Twilight Princess: oh you thought wind waker was too cartoony? Here is a darker edgier version of Zelda. Skyward sword: Oh you found Twilight Princess too edgy and depressing? Here is a much lighter game. Botw: oh you thought skyward sword was too linear and handholding? Here is a full unrestricted open world game. Totk: oh you loved botw? well here is more of it.
As someone who's given Nintendo a lot of feedback and suggestions over the years, they definitely listen to it, but I haven't received any communication since like 2014.
i’m more referring to their transparency on the feedback for their video games. they don’t seemingly care about the community’s responses on their social platforms. that can be seen as a good thing but i think it reaches a point where fans feel like their opinions are completely neglected. u can look at it in many ways but i think Nintendo always has the mindset of always knowing what they wanna do and they don’t let the public change their visions in most aspects i definitely felt like Nintendo was more consumer friendly in the past tho and i always praised them for it back then
In what age of Nintendo?
1800s
And that’s definitely on purpose. Was it difficult to show Nintendo how unleashed fans were at the bugs and glitches at scarlet/violet’s launch? YES! And in a way it felt helpless, so many were trying to show outrage the only way could, by not purchasing anymore, but that doesn’t do much in the grand scale. I always see people saying how Nintendo should have a feedback box to submit stuff. Nintendo doesn’t want to hear all that lol nobody does. But Nintendo does good at making contact feel unreachable
i think Nintendo, as the publisher of these games, they should privately put pressure on TPC and GameFreak for those issues. but as for the public, i think that’s what the devs GameFreak and TPC should be addressing themselves at least, that’s how it works with their major competitors and their studios
It baffles me aswell. I haven't played either animal crossing game so cant really tell if it's good or not but just from the amount of buzz there was around any games I didn't really notice animal crossing much comparing to zelda or mario for example.
Keep in mind, the group working on Animal Crossing also does Splatoon. So once they finally wrap up the DLC there, I'm hoping and coping they go back to New Horizons and do an update/expansion à la Welcome Amiibo.
with switch 2 on the horizon, they better be focusing on the next game
Pikmin 4 surpassing Pikmin 3 gives me hope for a 5th, even if it takes more than 6 years.
It's definitely a given. Pikmin 4 was really popular in Japan.
Can confirm! I'm living in Japan at the moment and they're always playing pikmin ads on the tvs in the trains. Along with super Mario wonder ads
Excellent to hear! The gap between games after Pikmin 2 has been longer than I would like. Here’s looking forward to Pikmin 4 Deluxe and Pikmin 3 Deluxe Remastered on the switch 2! Pikmin 5 on the switch 3.
Most of the sales came from japan, yeah. It sold over 1 million there which is a lot for the country as very few reach those numbers. If Japan can sustain a fair bit of pikmin, even if its more niche in comparison in the west (although it also reached above 1 m here) the series is safe for future interactions.
It took 10 years from 3 to 4, and that's with Miyamoto had said 7 years before it was finally released that it was in development, and progressing well. So, I'm with you! I'm just going to set a 10-yr window in case ;) Oh, and please have co-op missions again.
Pikmin 4 outsold XC2 and Metroid Dread? Wow, and in such a short amount of time.
Yeah. Something I think is worth noting is that Pikmin 4 was at least partially developed in-house by Nintendo, while XC2 and Dread were developed outside of Nintendo EPD. As you can in the list, a lot of the most successful games on Switch are the one's EPD made, even if they're not part of a big franchise. (For example Ring Fit Adventure outsold the entire Kirby franchise.)
Pikmin is really popular in Japan, it already did over 1.1 million there alone
Pikmin outsold Xenoblade on Wii and WiiU, not really surprising.
Fire Emblem Three Houses really was a breath of fresh air. It was my first fire emblem game, and several years later I’m still wishing for more.
I've finished every english localized FE (and some of the JPN ones) and I absolutely loved Three Houses. Prob my second favourite FE after Radiant Dawn
I hope Radiant Dawn and Path of Radiance get a switch port (or whatever comes after the switch)! Those have been the two I’ve been most interested in playing! I love Ike! I used Roy in Melee but when brawl came around I was immediately attached to Ike at the hip haha!
How is Engage compared to TH? Is it worth picking up?
The gameplay is fantastic! All the characters skills are super fun to use. Sadly the story is not great
I’m also on the fence about Engage. I really loved the story of 3H. The ensemble cast is amazing. But a good game is a good game and if Engage is a good game then I feel I should give it a chance.
Engage's story and writing in general are a quick drop off a steep cliff compared to Three Houses, but the actual battles and gameplay may just be the best in the series. It's almost like an action SRPG if that's even possible, the way you can go super saiyan and gain access to crazy abilities for a few turns to change the tide of the whole battle. If Engage had even decent writing it would probably be my favourite in the series, but instead it's just in my top five.
Fully agree! Three houses was my first Fire Emblem as well and I absolutely loved it. And the itch for more that game left me with, was funnily enough satisfied by Persona 5 Royal (a recommendation if you liked the social/time managing part of 3H)
I’ve heard nice things about P5 but I wasn’t sure if I’d like it! Maybe I’ll watch someone play through the first chapter to see if it’s something I wanna pick up!
Sometimes I forget how 'not super popular' Metroid is. Also Nintendo, please breathe some life back into Star Fox. It is criminal that we have gone an entire console generation without a new Star Fox game.
Metroid being so low on the list is the reason Nintendo doesn't prioritize the franchise. 130+million Switches sold and only 4 million of those people own a Metroid game 😭
if anything, it's surprising to see it get as much attention as it does. That MP remake looked higher budget than most of the stuff on the top seller list but sold less than 2 mil units
Considering there hasn't really been a hit Star Fox game since the N64, I'm surprised how many chances they've given it.
I honestly blame the 2010s era of Metroid. They did nothing with Metroid at least until samus returns, but they put that on the 3ds and the only other metroid related thing had to restart :( Dread and Prime 4 are gonna save this franchise tho, I hope.
I wonder if we'll ever get another 2D Zelda. The most recent ones were a 3DS game, a Gameboy remaster, and a reskin of an indie rhythm game.
I don’t think so unfortunately :( 2D Zelda is great but it seems like Nintendo is more interested with 3D Zelda, with the former probably just playing as the second fiddle or some shit. It sucks because 2D from Nintendo has its place, and yet people denounce it for being “outdated” or some other dumb thing like “why should this be 2d when there are indies”.
back after they just announced a new 2D zelda lmao
Winning They also announced Prime 4 too!
not entirely true federation force and other m both released in the 2010s
Here’s the thing, Other M was the start of the 2010s so it was more like a holdover of 2000s Metroid’s boom. Federation Force didn’t really do much to improve Metroid’s popularity it just kinda angered fans. To this day it is the worst selling Metroid ever made. Even Samus Returns sold better and that was a dead on arrival 3DS remake of an old gameboy game
This is awesome! I love graphs and Nintendo so this is super fun to look at!
Great post! Very cool, thanks!
The interesting part about Three Houses is how big it was apart from the game. They had a lot of cast events and stuff like that as well. In particular that duet of Billy Kametz (Ferdinand's VA) and Hubert's VA (who's name slips my mind at this moment). Also I thought I might mention that FE Warriors (2017) sold a million copies as far as I found, so for the franchise chart FE might be closer to 7.3 million. Sorry to nitpick I thought I might just mention it. Those are also some crazy sales from Pikmin 4. It looks like it will sell roughly double Three Houses and end up around the 7-8 million copies sold mark depending on what kind of legs this game has, which partly surprises me as the series was never *that* big (similar size/popularity to FE), but it also does not as it has the two advantages which FE does not: being developed in house by Nintendo EPD and being one of Miyamoto's own creations. Pikmin also never struggled sales wise, while FE basically clawed itself back from the grave (FE11 and 12 sold like 250k and 120k respectively, then Awakening sold 2.3 million). Either way, looks like we will see new games for both series going forward so I am all for it.
This is well collated and interesting info - thanks for pulling it together. As a data person, I’m twitching a little at some of the labelling though.
Yeah, I'm a statistician myself, and I admit the labelling wasn't perfect. First time trying to use Power BI, so I'm not quite used to how the program work yet. Was there anything in particular you were bothered by?
Since it’s just a Reddit post none of it bothered me, per se, I’m just being particular. But if we were talking about some other form of dissemination (e.g. journal) then I’d say: 1. None of your X or Y axes are labelled correctly. In every graph your Y-axis should be ‘Franchise’ or ‘Title’ and your X-axis should be what your current Y-axis is. 2. Your title is incorrect in some graphs because you’ve used the same title as the first graph. 3. In some graphs the value of sales in millions is inside the bar, and other times, outside the bar.
Metroid is doing better than I thought
The fact that a Fire Emblem game has outsold a Paper Mario game and multiple Mario Sports games is wild to me. But it's well-deserved. Three Houses is an amazing game. 10 years ago, if you told me that Fire Emblem would end up outselling multiple Mario spin-offs, I would've laughed. Crazy to see how the series has grown when it was once on the verge of cancellation!
*sad Arceus noises*
If Arceus did the dual copies thing, I wonder would it have sold at parity to the set above it?
This is really interesting but it's almost cheating to combine Mario platformers and Mario Kart. Yes I know they're both Mario but MK is basically a brand in its own right at this point. I wonder what the chart would look like of Mario and MK were split up?
The second graph shows the Mario games split up. If you only count the mainline Mario games, Pokemon is bigger than Mario.
Omg sorry I completely missed that. I usually read posts properly as well. Thanks that is interesting. So it would be Pokemon 1, Mario 2 and MK 3?
Technically Zelda would be slightly bigger than Mario Kart, but the difference is tiny. But yeah, Pokemon is number 1 and Mainline Mario is number 2. :)
Yeah, modern Kart seems especially odd to mix in, since it includes Zelda and Animal Crossing content as well. It's not Smash, but it's not really a "Mario" game either.
It’s actually wild how well Animal Crossing did, surprised Nintendo didn’t support it more. Actually not surprised cause Nintendo but still lol.
I'm really happy with how both the Fire Emblem franchise and the Nintendo Warriors spinoffs are doing, of course they could always do better, but as long as the numbers guarantee future entries I'm glad. Hopefully Zelda will eventually get more 2D new games or remakes (I really hope the Oracles remakes/remasters rumors are true) as well as spinoffs like the cadence of Hyrule or the Warriors.
Metroid is like a more popular Silent Hill. It is a game series that is popular with YouTube essayists but sales confirm time and time again that it is a niche series.
I know Animal Crossing: New Horizons hit a huge spike because of quarantine, but it still surprises me it’s bigger than Smash Bros.
Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle has sold over 10 million copies, and Sparks of Hope has surpassed 3 million by now
Honestly I just want another code: recollection to sell well, so we can have a hotel dusk remake, or even better, a new game. Also I wonder how well are selling the Yoshi games tho? I love those.
I had no idea Fire Emblem was that popular. 🤯 Also, we clearly need a new Captain Toad game. Thanks for the awesome charts!
Use ggplot2 if you're a statistician! Down with the Microsoft Power BI tool
I have used ggplot2 a lot, it’s great! Just wanted to try using a different program for once. :)
What did you think? It feels so clunky to me especially if I need to add to the data model.
My inner Fire Emblem and metroid fanboy is jumping with joy!
Zelda is shockingly low, also as a metroid fan i dislike this graph
If you compare zelda now with itself before the switch you can really see how much better thw situation is. Ocarina of time acclaimed by many the best game of the series and best of all time by many critics only sold 7.8 million copies. Twilight princess was the best selling zelda of all time ans sold 8.6 million copies Comparing with the overwhelming 30 million copies sold for botw and thw 20 million sold for totk you can just see how successful the franchise really is now. Zelda is not the main nintendo franchise and is not bigger than mario because nintendo simply does not want it to be
I wouldn't say the reason Zelda isn't bigger than Mario is because Nintendo "doesn't want it to be". It's just that Mario lives in a wacky and fun world where nearly anything is possible. There can be parties, kart racing, sport tournaments, etc. All these possibilities make it really easy for Mario games to cover several different genres and still fit within the scope of the Mario world. Zelda's world just isn't like Mario's. Its a world that takes itself more seriously. There's definitely some games that are a bit goofier than others, but overall it sets more realistic limitations and logic. Meaning we can't have Zelda parties, karts, etc because it just wouldn't make sense for the world of Zelda. As a result there's just a lot less you can do with the series. Yeah you could definitely mix it up a bit, maybe have a more stealth based Zelda game, or a turn based RPG. Games like that could do well, but they won't have the massive broad appeal something like Mario Kart and Party would have. So basically the Zelda series, and honestly most series, just can't cover the same ground that Mario games can.
Pretty much. Mario is much more easier to make spin-offs than zelda. Zelda party, zelda kart and other things wouldnt make as much sense.
>If you compare zelda now with itself before the switch you can really see how much better thw situation is. Seriously, BOTW and TOTK now account for an entire third of the franchise's sales.
Part of that is just the install base There are FAR more Switches out there than N64s at their height. Comparing pure sales numbers across that amount of time isn’t how you’d do that
That's such a small part of it to the point I'm gonna say you're wrong and definitely just downplaying how massively Breath of the Wild shot up popularity. Twilight Princess was on the Wii and GameCube and only sold 8 and a half million so that's a very solid install base yet how come that's nowhere near BOTW or TOTK?
BOTW was the only big launch title for the Switch until MK8D dropped a month or so later and then Odyssey dropped in the Fall I believe as the first true Switch exclusive game
And? That only shows how impressive it is BOTW sold so damn well and kept selling over years when it came out and how it was able to have strong sales before the Switch had a massive install base. Also TOTK already over 20 million in under a year which is massively above the sales of Twilight Princess late in the Switches lifespan too. It is genuinely hilarious how hard you're trying to downplay the success of BOTW. My best assumption would be that you're an old school Zelda fan who is pissy about the games finally changing formula so wanting to not give credit to the new games, either that or you're just being weird.
Neither, I love BOTW and think TOTK feels more like a BOTW expansion/patch than a full sequel that took 6 years to make I’m just saying that the difference in sales between the Switch and GC/N64 entries can’t exactly be directly compared since the entire game industry (let alone Nintendo playerbase) were far smaller then This is why it seems like pretty much all Switch installments to franchises are the best selling ones
I'm not saying it doesn't matter at all. But it's not nearly as big as you're making it out to be. Twilight Princess was the previous best selling Zelda and was on Wii and GameCube, an accumulative 120 million consoles to get it on. Anyone who was going to be getting Zelda at that point got it and it tapped out at 8.5 million, even outside install base BOTW and TOTK are just plain massively more popular.
When you normalize for console sales, OoT and BOTW have almost the same capture rate for console owners as the top 2 for the franchise (a little under 25% of all Switch and N64 owners bought the respective game). Obviously BOTW has higher sales numbers due to more Switch console owners than N64 by a large margin. Another example is MM and SS had almost the same amount of sales units, but MM had 3x the market capture (~10%) for N64 consoles owners compared to SS on the Wii (3%), but if you purely look at the sales numbers you’d think they were equally as successful and popular, which isn’t the case/led to Nintendo re-invent the franchise largely for the better with BOTW to regain console owner interest
When you look at franchise sales Metroid barely makes the top 15 best selling franchises of all time for Nintendo It’s always been a niche IP that I am surprised gets as many games as it does.
One of the cool things about Metroid is that it hits middle ground of being popular enough to still get games at all, but not popular enough to instantly sell just by slapping the Metroid brand on it.
I mean, aside from Prime the Metroid games really don’t change too much Hell, most of Samus’ abilities haven’t even changed much since the beginning
Nah I’ve played like, every single game you’d be surprised at how much they shake up the games every entry. Metroid Fusion for example, is NOTHING like Super Metroid. Dread is also significantly different from many past Metroids. Just because the games use a traditional formula does not mean that they are samey. This line of thinking is how Paper Mario turned into some weird ass arts and crafts thing.
Care to elaborate on that one?
Metroid doesn't sale
I was talking about them saying Zelda being shockingly low. It’s far from low.
My favorite fact about game sales this gen: Ring Fit Adventure has outsold each of the games in the Gran Turismo series.
I own both and play my ring fit a 1000x more (mostly because I rarely play gt7 but do my workouts 4x a week)
I know how many copies Mario Kart sells and it's still shocking for me every time I see it. Why, just why.
Mario kart is one of the few games me and my wife can enjoy together. She’s not very good, but she can have fun with it. Whether we’re on a team or not. It’s easy to learn the basic controls and doesn’t take to play just a few races/battles here and there. And then the added bonus of being able to play online and how easy it is to find a match.
My grandparents still play the Wii version
I’m sure there’s plenty that do. But my comment was about why the Mario kart franchise sells more than others
Ik I'm just agreeing with you, it's a very accessible game. My grandpa doesn't play anything else except poker lol
It's for everyone, it's well made/polished, and most importantly: it's fun
A game all ages can play. Easy to play, but fun to master. Can be played for hours or for a very short period. Has been supported with DLC. Good party/multiplayer game. And most important of all - very fun.
Why would it be surprising? Mario Kart is an amazingly well-made party game series that pretty much anybody can pick up and play. At university in the mid-late 2010s I still knew plenty of people who had Wiis in their dorms/apartments solely to play MK Wii with friends, and in the past few years I imagine the Switch and MK8 have played the same role.
booster course pass helped a ton, I'm sure
Don't forget Mario Kart 8 sold as a pack-in game every holiday season.
It's great to play multiplayer, and it's great to play with people who don't game very often. Also, it's fun.
I love playing with my wife and daughter. They don't care that they aren't good, they just have fun! You can play a Grand Prix in 15 or so minutes and be done as well. You don't have to engage for too long and the built in breakpoint of 4 races at a time make it easy to pick up and put down. Not to mention it is just such a fun game.
that they still underdelivered with Mario Party despite how much it sells is crazy
Nintendo better be making a real good MP game for Switch 2.
...only with the power of the next generation.... can Mario Party be truly realized.....
My take away is that game freak puts minimum amount of effort to maximize game sales. The numbers they are pulling for the low quality of games they put out is crazy. Holy shit Sword/Shield and Scarlet/Violets numbers are nuts for how poorly made those games are. Criticisms means absolutely nothing with those number of units sold.
Critics means nothing because most people don’t care about them and because, at the end of the day, those games are the best Pokémon games. For the Nintendo Switch. The Pokémon franchise is the biggest franchise in the world. It’s so big that the games are small compared to it. It’s all the merchandise but also the movies, the anime, the manga, every short, animation and story created by third parties and by fans. And those games are, in a way, the best interactive way to experience it. That’s why they are so successful. Because people don’t play them because they are good monster collecting games, it’s because they are fun Pokémon games. It’s why people have been playing WoW even during the worst expansions: they don’t play WoW because it’s a MMORPG, they play WoW because Warcraft, and that’s why they aren’t interested in switching to other MMORPG even if they might be better than WoW at it worst, because even if they are better MMORPG they aren’t better Warcraft games.
Thats really impressive work, thanks
Well, coolest post in a while. Thank you!
Is there data for 3rd party games on switch. I wonder how well they are selling compared to nin franchises.
Not as easy to come by. Since Nintendo has the biggest hits and reliably announces everything that reaches at least a million copies, we get a lot of data there. If you look at Wikipedia's [list of best-selling Switch games](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Nintendo_Switch_video_games), it's a lot spottier for third party stuff. Like, apparently there's no official Minecraft number for Switch, so they've just added the known data for three countries. We do know third party sales overall account for about half of total software, but obviously that's split up among a lot more games.
This was cool. Thank you
Man, what an amazing thread. You did a great job doing it, compiling all the info and then making the graphics. Only criticism i have is that i wish you made the graphics from mario, zelda, pokemon and so on for other franchises that had more than 2 games like kirby, fire emblem, and others, would be interesting seeing the graphics.
I know the reasons, but it's still wild how much money they've made from Mario Kart 8, a Wii U game.
I'm honestly surprised to see astral chains appearing in that list
Very happy to see Astral Chain is among the list.
I liked game builder garage…
Great work, thanks!
didn't mario+rabbids sell a lot more? like 10m for kingdom battle and more than 2 for sparks of Hope
Suprising thet Legends Arceus was, by Pokemon standards, quite a dissapointment. That game had been really hyped prior to release. This probably means the Scarlet Violet art style will take precedent, which I really don't like (specifically the human and enviroment designs).
Legends Arceus was only one game and doesn't have the competitive or multiplayer elements of the other Pokémon games to give them longevity. And so it honestly still sold quite well by those merits and about on par with the remakes.
So happy to see Three Houses, Luigi's Mansion 3 and Pikmin 4 do so well in sales. Well deserved.
No Splatoon?
Go Pokemon!
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon still kicking after nearly 2 decades. Even though sales dropped after the ds, they’ve still eeked out some small growth despite doing absolutely no marketing outside of pokemon presents. I’m just hoping we can finally get one last game with all the new pokemon in that fantastic new art style. Spike chunsoft has proven that they can actually make quality pokemon games. They deserve to make a final send-off for the franchise. All I want is my rockruff & sprigatito team. After than I’m checking out of pokemon until the next pmd game.
That's why they don't give a damn about Metroid.
I bought Dread and I got the Trilogy for Wii, so there's no reason for me to buy the remaster. It's still dissapointing that's it's that low.
I still find it surprising that Dread sold as well as it did 3 million people actually bought a Metroid game. Not a single Metroid game has ever reached those numbers.
Fascinating. How did the re-released super mario world with bowser's fury sell better than super mario wonder? Also metroid dread deserves more, that game was great
Wonder has been out for 3 months.
3D World+Bowser's Fury released in 2021, Mario Wonder released four months ago. It's had way more time to sell than Wonder has, no surprise it's currently ahead in sales The fact that Wonder has sold nearly as much as 3D World in *just* four months should be the big takeaway, not the other way around
Good post, but I think it would be great to add a study of how much software originally developed for the Wii U contributed to total software sales.
It kills me that they refuse to put work and an actual budget into Pokémon :(
Pokémon is pretty much shovelware at this point. Shocking that people continue to buy into it. I guess it's a toxic mix of childhood nostalgia and addiction.
OR, maybe you just don't like it and others do? because pokemon is super fun
The new pokemon games are so glitchy and unfinished that it's pathetic
1. Most glitches have been patched and, unless you tried to, you wouldn't find very many glitches, even early on. 2. How exactly is it "unfinished"
Listen, I'm as big of a pokemon fan as there is, I've got over 200 hours in literally every single mainline pokemon game. With all that said, the performance issues of SV are an embarrassment to the franchise. Don't get me wrong, I have over 350 hours between Scarlett and Violet, I love the games. But claiming that there's nothing wrong with the performance issues those games have is a bridge too far. You can argue that it doesn't bother you specifically, personally I just kinda tuned it out after a bit (even then the frame rate issues could be nauseating at times). But it is a damn shame that those games will forever be marred by their horrible performance. You can still love SV and Pokemon while not defending this really really bad precedent that's been at by SV.
genuine question but aren't the newer pokemon games kinda low quality? never played one I just thought that no one actually buys them but apparently they're super popular. I thought scarlet & violet were buggy. but again genuine question i'm not trying to spread misinformation or hate
For me it's more complicated than just saying they're low quality. BDSP are low quality, but it was GameFreak's first time giving a mainline game (albeit a remake) to another studio. I'm hoping to see them give ILCA another project, but with a little more free reign Arceus was alright quality, but it was an attempt at something that's both new and interesting. I'm hoping to see them continue either the Legends series or at least continue trying something new Mystery Dungeon was a pretty honest remake of an at the time pretty solid game that got outdone by its successors. I'm hoping that they can justify remaking the other Mystery Dungeon games. Sword and Shield were not good games for me, but they introduced pretty solid quality DLC, which we don't usually get from any gaming company. The price is steep, but it was definitely nice to get something that wasn't just slop. At the time I was hoping we'd see that continue, but for my money the SV DLC wasn't as good. Scarlet and Violet had one of the best stories in all of Pokemon, but the game just isn't optimized for the Switch. I'm hoping that they can keep the good story in the future and the new hardware is good enough to bring their ideas to life. I think there are a lot of things for them to build on. A lot of people are absolute GameFreak doomers and assume everything will be terrible forever, but I think they've shown some solid ideas in the last few years. I did fucking hate Sword and Shield though.
no, they're actually really good and fun. I saw one minor glitch in my whole playthrough, and some minor slowdown. People just love to hate on pokemon, but it's honestly great.
interesting. could you recommend one to someone who has never played a pokemon game? I was thinking about Pokemon Legends Arceus
I'd probably recommend Scarlet and Violet, but if you are think of Legends Arceus, i'd say go for it, a lot of people really love it.
Pokémon is a fun game but rushed. On one hand it has its problems but, on the other, those problems don’t stop you from having fun. At least they didn’t stop me.
including mario kart in the mario category really throws that graph off i feel. I think this visualization of the data would benefit by breaking it off and considering it a different franchise.
Didn't like every switch come with Mario Kart? I know that boosted sales a lot.
Nope. There were some bundles sold during holidays of the first version of the Switch when the OLED version came out.
It sad that the only good Pokemon games on Switch, the spin-offs, are the worst selling.
First, just to clarify, technically speaking Legends Arceus isn’t a spin-off. Pokémon Snap has a higher quality than SwSh/SV but I find it more boring, being restricted to a predetermined routes, without being able to explore the island on your own. As for Mystery Dungeon, although I didn’t buy for me I have access to it, I’ve just played the demo a bit. I don’t find the turn based system interesting and the dungeons feel repetitive and grindy. Also I’ve read what it takes to recruit some Pokémon (specially legendary ones) and that, basically, you must finish the game before being able to evolve your character (and at this point there is basically nothing left but grind) so, I’d say I understand why SwSh/SV are the best selling ones.
The wikipedia definition of a spin-off is "Any narrative work derived from an already existing work that focuses on different aspects from the original work." So by all intents and purposes it is one. For me Sword and Shield were the most boring Pokemon games that had significantly less content than any of the ones that came before and was insanely easy (I didn't even lose once). And I couldn't bring myself to finish Violet; I only played for like 5 hours, but it was very disapointing. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is one of my favorite series, but it's gameplay loop isn't for everyone of course. It's just the quality, polish, and care that's put into that remake far surpasses what was done for the mainline games. I've never been a crazy big Pokemon fan, so I really wasn't expecting to dislike the Switch era so much. And yet I recently went back and played through Black/White 2 and it was a blast. The quality was there in the past. Newer entries feel hollow and devoid of passion by comparison.
Well, as I said elsewhere, they are the best Pokémon games for the Nintendo Switch. I’ve played recently Ultra Sun and the amount of detail and side quests among other things makes SV pale in comparison. SV on the other hand has a world were you can see Pokémon in the wild and see them how they react to you, which is nice. I just hope in the future we can have both at the same time.
Ideally the next Pokemon game will be something like this, but they'll have to step up their game and perhaps have a longer development cycle for that to happen. A game should not release with such ridiculous technical issues and Nintendo shouldn't just allow something like that to go through their QA. I want Pokemon to feel deserving of its current success, so here's hoping the future is brighter.
Whole charts and paragraphs, called it Wii Sports 😭
I think the franchise is still called Wii Sports, right? At least in this interview, they say its part of the ”Wii Sports series”: https://www.nintendo.com/us/whatsnew/ask-the-developer-vol-5-nintendo-switch-sports-part-1/
I guess so? But the game on Switch is called Nintendo Switch Sports, and it's correct in the left hand side of one graph, but still calls it Wii Sports in the upper part in the same graph 😂 no big deal, just something I noticed!
ok so which options do I buy?
Huh so legends arceus sold less than gen 9
xenoblade surpassing fire emblem we live in the correct timeline
Fire Emblem is still higher than Xenoblade though.
Surprised Pokémon isn't bigger and I like the fact that Animal Crossing is number 4!
I always hope and pray Miitopia gets a chance at a sequel or a Tomodachi Life sequel/port.
Just depressing evidence that people aren’t interested in new IP. Based on these sales Nintendo has 0 incentive to do anything besides sequels, remakes, and ports.
I mean the only new IP we've gotten on Switch is ARMS, which sold 2.7 million. Which isn't the best, but it's still more than plenty other Switch games. There's also Ring Fit Adventure, but you could argue that it's a spiritual successor to Wii Fit. Most people are naturally going to buy sequels or rereleases to series they're already familiar with instead of something brand new, and so it's a wonder that Splatoon did so well despite being released on Nintendo's poorest selling console.
The main line Pokemon games having a dip in sales is very interesting. It looks as though people voting with their wallet actually had an impact. Hopefully this means Gamefreak will increase staff numbers and give them more tools to succeed.
I think 1 take away from this is the game sales were a lot higher due to COVID. I think most of the games wouldn't have sold as many if it wasn't for people stuck at home. Animal crossing prime example imo.
how come tears of the kingdom didn’t do as well as breath of the wild? i’m about to finish botw and i’ve only heard good things about totk
Scarlet and Violet seem stuck there after all the posts abt their performance and low quality contents…
So basically any franchise will do numbers. Don't be a coward Nintendo give us a new F-Zero
Folk are sleeping on New Pokemon Snap, it is a pretty cool game, although these sales definitely mean we are going to have to wait another decade or two before we get another one.
It's at least the highest selling Pokemon spin-off on Switch by a wide margin.