Pokémon Legends Z-A Sells 5.8 Million In First Week, Half Of Players On Switch 2

According to Twitter user Pierre485, this puts it at the fifth-highest week-one sales for a game in the series, behind games like Scaret/Violet and Legends Arceus, but ahead of X/Y and Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee.

Legends Z-A is a follow-up to Legends Arceus that similarly features real-time combat alongside the return of Mega Evolutions from X/Y. As for the plot setup, the game’s website offers the following: “The story is set in Lumiose City, where an urban redevelopment plan is underway to shape the city into a place that belongs to both people and Pokémon.”

The news of the game’s sales figures comes shortly after a massive data leak revealed key elements of Legends Z-A ahead of time, alongside details about future games in the franchise and several of the games’ budgets. Legends Z-A was apparently budgeted at a modest $13 million. While imperfect, we can calculate the rough amount the game earned by dividing the sales numbers in half (2.9 million) to reflect the Switch 1 and Switch 2 sales, respectively, and multiplying each half by the cost of the game on those systems ($60 and $70). That gives us $377 million. If we subtract that from the leaked budget (which admittedly probably didn’t account for marketing and other costs), we see the game has already made close to $364 million. Keep in mind, this is before the holiday season, when these games tend to sell quite well.

While many Pokémon fans frequently complain online about the series for not being as graphically impressive as many of its peers, and that it rarely takes creative risks (outside the recent move from turn-based to real-time gameplay), it’s clear that Nintendo doesn’t have much financial incentive to change things—sure, Legends Z-A didn’t sell as many copies in its first week as some of its predecessors, but it still made the company an absurd amount of money in a very short period.