Pokemon Sword and Shield is a Top Five Best-Selling Switch Game With 16 Million Sales

Nintendo announced its financial report today, and on top of surging Switch sales, Pokemon Sword and Shield emerged a major winner of 2019. Within a nine-month period ending in Dec. 2019, Pokemon Sword and Shield sold a whopping 16.06 million units, landing it a spot in the top five best-selling Switch games.

Detailed on Nintendo's site, the Sword/Shield combo falls in at spot number five, less than a million sales away from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Super Mario Odyssey, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and still-crowned king Mario Kart 8 Deluxe close out the top sellers list.

As industry analyst Daniel Ahmad notes, this not only beats Let's Go sales within a similar time frame, but Pokemon Sun and Moon as well. Sword and Shield are now closing in on Pokemon Sun and Moon's lifetime sales record (16.17 million), all after only a couple months on the Nintendo Switch market.

It's fairly strong sales, given the campaign to boycott Sword and Shield leading up to the game's launch. I guess some people either caved or were never going to see it through in the first place. Our review of Pokemon Sword and Shield found it to be a solid entry in the series, even if it wasn't quite the step forward you would hope for with a home console Pokemon entry.

But with two expansions on the way and even more Pokemon entering the Galarian Pokedex, it's likely that Pokemon Sword and Shield could continue to make waves on the Nintendo Switch.