Pokémon Scarlet & Violet are the best-selling Pokémon games in Japan, surpassing Red & Green

Pokémon Scarlet & Violet came out in 2022 and still are the most recent mainline entries in the Pokémon franchise. However, and despite all the people that heavily criticized them for it’s glaring technical issues, these games were apparently a big commercial success, especially in Japan.

According to Famitsu (and confirmed later by Serebii.net) The Pokémon Company recently revealed the total sales numbers of Pokémon Scarlet & Violet in Japan. With over 8.3 million units sold, the Generation 9 games broke a 28-year-old record and surpassed Pokémon Red & Green in sales, ultimately becoming the best-selling Pokémon games of all time in its home country.

This is a monumental achievement, seeing as the Pokémon franchise was a global phenomenon during the late 90s, and the Japanese Generation One games still regularly sell copies, even to this day. This popularity is not even exclusive to Japan, because Pokémon Scarlet & Violet have sold 24.36 million units worldwide, which cemented them as the third best-selling Pokémon games in the entire world.

In a fun but appropriate coincidence, yesterday was the 2-year anniversary of these games, and The Pokémon Company seemingly celebrated it by releasing a new Tera Raid Battle event in which trainers can fight and catch a powerful Shiny Rayquaza.

Pokémon Scarlet & Violet were successful but extremely controversial

The announcement of this impressive milestone was quite divisive and controversial among gamers, just like anything else related to Pokémon Scarlet & Violet. Since it’s initial release, the entire internet heavily criticized them due to their frustrating technical issues, like their lackluster performance, their disappointing graphics and their many bugs and glitches. While subsequent updates patched some of these issues, both of these games are brimming with technical errors to this day.

However, and as some commenters have pointed out, Pokémon Scarlet & Violet still have plenty of positive features that many fans have been asking for many years. They are the first true open-world entries in the franchise, the narrative is gripping and introduced a bunch of memorable characters, the soundtrack is incredible and almost every new Pokémon has an impeccable design. Some fans were able to get pass their massive technical issues and now see Pokémon Scarlet & Violet as some of the best games in the entire franchise.

Another common criticism was related to their release date, since Pokémon Legends: Arceus, another ambitious mainline entry in the series, also came out in 2022, a few months before Scarlet & Violet. Many fans blame this tight deadline and a potentially rushed development for these games’ shortcomings, and some are worried that this may affect future titles as well. However (and fortunately) The Pokémon Company revealed last year that it’s already having internal discussions about future game’s release schedules in order to ensure quality products. This explains why the next game, Pokémon Legends: Z-A will not come out until 2025.