‘Pokemon Sword and Shield’ Still Top the First Weeks of 2020 Japan Video Game Rankings

It’s another new year and still, Nintendo and The Pokemon Company’s Nintendo Switch hits Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield still remains number one on last week’s Japan Video Game rankings. The said ranks is carefully compiled by website Famitsu. Both games also top the previous video game rankings.

To date, the games have a total of 3,256,754 copies sold in Japan alone. Weekly copies sold last week were 71,695.

This has been followed by the popular Nintendo Switch fitness game Ring Fit Adventure at #2, then followed by Mojang’s popular video game Minecraft at #3. Minecraft was ported and released for the Nintendo Switch on June 21, 2018.

Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield were released worldwide on November 15. The two versions of the game will feature Pokemon from the Galar region, and players can choose one of the three basic starter Pokemon namely Gookey, Scorbunny, and Sobble. This is also the game where the Gigantamax forms are featured, in which Pikachu, Eevee, Meowth, Butterfree, Charizard, Alcremie, and Corviknight will be having their own, said forms in this game. Two legendary Pokemon will also be introduced.

Other features in the Pokemon Sword and Shield game include the Max Raid Battles, Dynamax, Gigantamax forms, the Battle Stadium, Poke Jobs, Pokemon Camp, and Surprise trades. This is the second Nintendo Switch game for the popular franchise. 

The game has also announced expansion sets as well as a cloud-based Pokemon storage service (Pokemon Home).

Even before the release of the two games, people have already shared their frustration and disappointment over some Pokemon that are missing from the game. Fans say that this is saddening as people expected so much from the game’s developer Game Freak thinking that it would be better than its first Nintendo Switch games of the franchise, Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Pokemon: Let’s Go, Eevee! which were based on the 1998 video game Pokemon Yellow: Special Pikachu Edition.

The first Nintendo Switch games Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu, and Pokemon: Let’s Go, Eevee! was released in November 2018. The release of the games was a huge success as it had a record of more than 11.28 million combined sales as of September 2019. This huge number has made the games known as one of the best-selling games for the Nintendo Switch.

Here is the complete list of the video game rankings for the mentioned week, including the weekly and total sales so far.

Source: Famitsu, ANN