Pokemon Legends: Z-A sells over 5.8 million copies in its first week, cementing the real-time RPG as a success even if it's still lagging behind Legends: Arceus

Pokemon Legends Z-A has already sold 5.8 million copies in its first week, but it's not quite as big as Arceus.

Pokemon Legends: Arceus is the best thing to happen to Pokemon in years if you ask me, a lapsed fan of the series, and it did well enough that Nintendo followed it up with the latest game in the series, Pokemon Legends: Z-A, which once again changes up the formula of the iconic RPG series. Pokemon was always going to be successful regardless, (Scarlet and Violet selling 27.15 million despite being a mess at launch is enough to prove that), but Legends Z-A has had an impressive first week.

The Pokemon Company announced in a press release (translated by Genki_JPN on Twitter) that in its first week, Pokemon Legends: Z-A has already sold 5.8 million copies, with about half of those sales coming from the Switch 2 edition (no doubt helped by the Pokemon Legends Z-A Switch 2 bundle). This will immediately put it into the echelon of best-selling Switch 2 games (Mario Kart World sold about 5.6 million in its first month according to Nintendo), and considering it is estimated that it only needs to sell 200k units to break even, I'm sure Nintendo and The Pokemon Company are happy.

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However, it actually underperformed compared to the last Legends game, with Pokemon Legends: Arceus selling 6.5 million in its first week, as well as reviewing better. While not a massive difference, there could definitely be a number of contributing factors to this, whether it be a bad taste left in players mouths over Scarlet and Violet, some waiting to get a Switch 2 instead of picking up the Switch version, or simply they're not interested in the new combat system. Regardless, it's still a sales number that no one (well, maybe except for Square Enix) would be unhappy with.

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