Back in May I looked at the collective sales figures of the Pokémon franchise and found out that it was the number two highest-selling video game franchise of all time with 193 million copies sold. Mario held the number one seat with 222 million copies sold over the span of 29 years and 200 (yes, two hundred) different games.

Out of curiosity I checked the sales with Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver figures (8.4 million) added to that. Pokémon now sits at about 201 million copies sold. And it happened in just 15 years and with only 50 different versions: (I only counted the main series games (here) half the time and with only a quarter of the versions!

That’s a big milestone… over two hundred million games sold. But this is not the final destination.

Pokémon Black and White versions are due out in Japan later this year and in the U.S. early next year. Now, I am not a market analyst, but I am going to make a wild guess and say that they outsell SS and HG. I base this guess mainly on the fact that this is a whole new generation and with the recent remakes of HG and SS, a lot of old fans may be back in the mix. Think about it: if someone who played Pokémon and enjoyed it a lot as a kid walked into a GameStop and saw the remakes, they might spark some memories of the good times when they were kids and that might compel them to buy a copy. There is no guarantee that they get hooked again, but at least it is a sale.

Now, we have the number two game franchise making a move on the number one seat; however, we are about 20 million sales from the top spot. I don’t think Pokémon Black and White will sell 20 million copies, (that would be record-breaking) but they should sell at around 8-10 million copies around the globe. That would put us around 210 million: just 12 million shy.

As long as everything goes as it has been, a third version of Black and White should come out (Pokémon Grey Version?), then possibly a Ruby and Sapphire remake. If that happens, Pokémon will most likely become the number one selling game franchise of all time during the 5th generation. I don’t know about you, but as a Pokémon fan I am proud of the fact that soon we will be at the top, but I don’t think we should stop there. Let’s set the bar very high. Let’s make sure that if Game Freak ever stops making Pokémon that the franchise stays on top for a very long time.

Of course, sales are everything in this race to number one, so please buy your copies to make sure that they get counted. I want Pokémon on the top. Then the world will be ours…

*walks off laughing evilly*


Thanks to Cat for the title idea, and GL for editing out my mistakes.

Mario will always be the best selling one, but Sonic will always be the faster one. Anyways, it predicted to be like that. They're somehow more popular then Zelda or Metroid.

I don't actually think that B&W will get huge sales, or at least not as much as HG&SS. HG&SS were remakes of the final games of the Gameboy Era - After Gold and Silver, many Pokemon fans stopped playing the games, and the vastly improved remakes made a lot of them want to pick it up again.