The Pokemon Company have published a press release about the first-week sales for Sword & Shield. The game is the best selling software on Nintendo Switch of all time.
Launch week sales put Pokemon Sword & Shield at the top of the charts, making it the biggest exclusive game of the year and the third biggest boxed game launch of the year. The new RPG from The Pokemon Company and Game Freak managed to ship more than 6 million units globally, which is the double of Pokemon Let's Go, which achieved 3 million in its first week. It's also higher than Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which sold 5 million in its first week.
The figure makes Pokemon Sword & Shield the fastest-selling Switch game of all time according to the latest press release from The Pokemon Company. The game is also first in Japan, with weekly sales of 2 million in both physical and digital versions. Here is the rough translation of the press release, which was initially published in Japanese:
"The latest series "Pocket Monster Sword" and "Pocket Monster Shield" released at the time (compatible models: Nintendo Switch) recorded sales of 6 million units worldwide * during the first week of release around the world. The number of 6 million units sold in the first week is the fastest and highest number of Nintendo Switch software ever"
Of course, these numbers are not surprising at all since Pokemon Sword & Shield was one of the most anticipated Pokemon games of all time. Furthermore, Pokemon games traditionally perform very strong so the numbers are somewhat expected.
However, this is still quite an impressive result for the game since it's only available on one platform - Nintendo Switch. With this start, Pokemon Sword & Shield will by all predictions beat last year's title's Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee! which reached 11.28 million copies sold in total.