This Week In Sales: Pokémon Sun & Moon Makes Its Grand Debut

Period: The week of November 14th – November 20 (2016)

Top-seller: Pokémon Sun & Moon – 1,590,629

Nintendo 3DS sales: 529

Nintendo 3DS LL sales: 96

Nintendo 2DS – 17,769

New Nintendo 3DS sales: 8,193

New Nintendo 3DS LL sales: 81,044

PlayStation Vita sales: 9,191

Wii U sales: 3,251

PlayStation 4 sales: 25,605

PlayStation 4 Pro: 12,421

PlayStation 3 sales: 625

Xbox One sales: 186

<< Last week’s software sales chart

<< How to read and understand sales

Last week, Japan saw the biggest first-week debut for any title this year with the highly anticipated release of Pokémon Sun & Moon. Japanese sales tracker Media Create gives us a look at how it performed along with other titles not named Pokémon from the week of November 14 through November 20, 2016.

#1 of the week goes to Pokémon Sun & Moon with a whopping 1,590,629 sold in its debut. Combined with the Pokémon Sun & Moon Double Pack, which placed #2 with 151,379 copies sold. With the double pack counting towards two copies each, it totaled to a grand 1,893,387. According to Media Create, Sun version sold roughly 808,000 copies while Moon version sold around 783,000.

You might be wondering “what about the 1.9 millions in three days that was reported earlier?” Keep in mind that Famitsu and Media Create are two different trackers, and both may have similar numbers, but will always be slightly different, but the reason Famitsu has much higher numbers is because they also include digital cards that are sold at retailers (but not digital sales from the eShop).

Now here’s the fun part—let’s see how it stacks compared to the first-week sales of Pokémon titles going all the way back to Ruby & Sapphire in 2002, provided by Media Create:

• (2002) Pokémon Ruby & Sapphire – 1,093,299 [GBA]
• (2004) Pokémon Fire Red & Leaf Green – 1,013,119 [GBA]
• (2004) Pokémon Emerald – 790,527 [GBA]
• (2006) Pokémon Diamond & Pearl – 1,588,734 [DS]
• (2008) Pokémon Platinum – 963,273 [DS]
• (2009) Pokémon Heart Gold & Soul Silver – 1,442,990 [DS]
• (2010) Pokémon Black & White – 2,557,779 [DS]
• (2012) Pokémon Black 2 & White 2 – 1,561,738 [DS]
• (2013) Pokémon X & Y – 1,866,570 [3DS]
• (2014) Pokémon Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire – 1,327,671 [3DS]
• (2016) Pokémon Sun & Moon – 1,893,387 [3DS]

[Thanks for the data and chart, Ishaan!]

As you can see, Pokémon Sun & Moon’s debut with the double pack puts it at the 2nd all-time best-selling debut for the series. According to Media Create, the sell-through rate was around 80%, about the same X & Y had, except it didn’t have a double pack to go with it.

On the hardware side, Pokémon Sun & Moon proved to be console-sellers, as it helped move 81,044 units of the New 3DS LL, an increase of 398.36% compared to the week prior with the additional 34,000 units of the Pikachu Yellow model and 9,000 units of the Solgaleo and Lunala Black model. The 3DS family as a whole sold about 108,000 units, about 333.21% increase compared to the week prior. Starting this week, we’ll begin seeing a separate set of numbers for the PlayStation 4 Pro, which sold about half the total of the standard PlayStation 4.

The top-20 chart for the week was as follows:

Sales data acquired from 4Gamer and Media Create.