Pokemon Scarlet and Violet become the third Pokemon RPGs to hit 25 million sales, surpassed only by Sword and Shield and the classics

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet key art showing a male trainer riding on Koraidon's back, and a female trainer on Miraidon's back, surrounded by starter Pokemon Fuecoco, Quaxly and Sprigatito. — (Image credit: The Pokemon Company)

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet continue to sell exceptionally well, as they've just become the third Pokemon games to hit 25 million sales.

The ninth-generation Pokemon games may have generated mixed reactions from the fanbase thanks to performance issues and bugs, but it's clear that Pokemon trainers everywhere were still hungry to embark on the open-world RPG. That's understandable, of course – Pokemon Legends: Arceus gave us our first taste of an open-world Pokemon adventure, and Scarlet and Violet took things a step further, allowing us to take on Gym Battles in any order and traverse the region as we see fit, and that's been reflected in its sales figures.

Thanks to new sales data released by Nintendo, we know that as of June 30, 2024, Scarlet and Violet's combined sales came to 25.29 million units. They've still not managed to surpass Sword and Shield's sales, which remain ahead at 26.35 million, but things are definitely getting close. With that said, none of the newer games have ever managed to catch up to the original RPGs, Red, Blue, and Green, which previously surpassed 31 million. Can't beat the classics, I suppose.

On top of that, the webmaster of Pokemon news site Serebii, Joe Merrick, reports that Scarlet and Violet have been the fastest Pokemon games to hit this 25 million milestone. It's now been a year and eight months since they launched, whereas it took Sword and Shield "just under three years" to hit the same sales figures, with them having reached 21.85 million after around a year and seven months. Does that mean that the Paldea-region games will eventually be able to overtake the Galar-region RPGs? It's impossible to know at this point, but the pace of their sales is definitely promising.

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet VGC is about to become wildly different thanks to new rules that ban Legendary and Paradox 'mons, taking many of the strongest team members out of action.

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I'm GamesRadar+'s Deputy News Editor, working alongside the rest of the news team to deliver cool gaming stories that we love. After spending more hours than I can count filling The University of Sheffield's student newspaper with Pokemon and indie game content, and picking up a degree in Journalism Studies, I started my career at GAMINGbible where I worked as a journalist for over a year and a half. I then became TechRadar Gaming's news writer, where I sourced stories and wrote about all sorts of intriguing topics. In my spare time, you're sure to find me on my Nintendo Switch or PS5 playing through story-driven RPGs like Xenoblade Chronicles and Persona 5 Royal, nuzlocking old Pokemon games, or going for a Victory Royale in Fortnite.