Topic: Pokemon Black & White Japan's Fastest Selling Game Ever

[NWR_MattB]

Nintendo's latest Pokemon games have broken several records in just two days.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/24089

Pokemon Black and Pokemon White were released in Japan over the weekend. Some retailers sold out, but even with demand exceeding supply, Pokemon Black and Pokemon White still managed to sell exceptionally well.

Pre-orders for the game managed to reach 1.7 million, though some retailers stopped taking pre-orders as they were afraid that they wouldn’t have enough stock. In a mere two days, the games managed to sell 2,637,285 copies, breaking the record for the biggest all-time game opening in Japan.

To put this in perspective, only Final Fantasy VIII for the PlayStation managed to sell over 2.5 million units its first week, and only five other games have ever broken the 2 million mark for first week sales in Japan.

What makes the feat even more amazing is that Pokemon Black and Pokemon White had two days of sales in the tracking period opposed to the usual four, due to the game being released on Saturday rather than the usual Thursday. The next shipment of games is not scheduled to arrive until this weekend, so it appears as though some gamers might have to do some searching to find a copy of the game.

Here are the openings of past mainline Pokemon games in Japan, as well as their lifetime-to-date totals.

1. [NGB] Pokemon Red / Green / Blue (Nintendo) – 140,074 / 7,783,101
2. [NGB] Pokemon Gold / Silver (Nintendo) – 1,425,768 / 6,089,503
3. [NDS] Pokemon Diamond / Pearl (Pokemon Co.) – 1,586,360 / 5,767,283
4. [GBA] Pokemon Ruby / Sapphire (Pokemon Co.) – 1,245,003 / 5,337,045

[Mop it up]

These games came out in Japan already? I guess I haven't been paying attention.

I wonder how many people bought both...

[TJ Spyke]

Unlike past games, there are reasons to get both other than exclusive Pokemon. Each game has an exclusive area, most cities look slightly different, and one gym even has different gym leaders based on the game.

The huge popularity of the game cause so much online strain that just one day after the game released Nintendo already shut down the Pokemon Global Link for maintenance.

[GearBoxClock]

HeartGold has been my only launch-day Pokemon game so far. I plan to change that when these come out. I wonder which I should get?

[Sageprotector]

Way to go Pokemon! I definitely plan to get Black since it's the cooler shade to me.

[BlackNMild2k1]

"Always bet on black"

[xcwarrior]

Good to hear. 5th gen pokemon look awesome. I can't wait until it comes to the states.

[Shaymin]

These games came out in Japan already? I guess I haven't been paying attention.

I wonder how many people bought both...

Although more than the usual based on what TJ Spyke said, it's probably still an insignificant number.

I will say, this may explain why NOA decided to go after major fansites who confessed to ROM usage (one was blatant, one got bit by an anti-piracy measure).

[TJ Spyke]

As Bulbapedia points out though, there is a question is to whether those notices are real or not. For one, they claim to be from Nintendo (rather than The Pokemon Company, which usually handles these types of matters), and that why Nintendo of America rather than Nintendo of Europe that would send a notice to Serebii (a UK based site).

I wonder when Nintendo will start releasing English names, right now we still have to use the Japanese names.