14 DAY TRIAL // Pokemon Black and White, the new video games in the long-running franchise published by Nintendo and developed by Game Freak, have managed to sell more than 1 million copies on the United States market in just one day, breaking all the records set by the very successful Soul Silver and Heart Gold launch.
Those games only managed to go up to 780,000 units in sales in one day while the Black and White launch has hit 1,08 million and a weekly sales record will likely be broken next.
The games were already a hit on the Japanese market, but it was not clear whether gamers in the United States or Europe would be as interested in the new release.
Charlie Scibetta, who is a senior director of corporate communications at Nintendo America, said, “Longtime Pokemon fans are attracted to the new Pokemon, new battle systems and a new region to explore, while newcomers enjoy the ability to jump in and have fun right away”.
He added, “These sales numbers illustrate the continued strength of the Nintendo DS family of systems. Already established as the nation’s best-selling video game platform of all time, the installed base of more than 47 million makes it the ideal hand-held for developers to reach a huge gaming-focused target audience.”
Pokemon Black and White does not rely on all the characters that gamers might already know, but on a cast of entirely new creatures that the player needs to find, evolve and lead into battle.
The two versions of the game have slightly different line-ups and the unique monsters can be traded between gamers.
Nintendo has not yet announced whether it will port Pokemon Black and White to the newly launched 3DS handheld or whether older titles in the series will be remade using the new glass free three-dimensional gaming technology.