This week’s top 10 physical game sales in Japan comprised 96% of Pokemon Scarlet & Violet

With 96% of the top 10 titles sold, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet absolutely dominated the Japanese physical software sales charts this week.

Famitsu reports that the game outperformed Splatoon 3, which came in at number two on the chart, selling 2,537,292 physical copies between its November 18 release and the ranking’s November 20 cut-off date.

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet accounted for 96.3% of the 2,634,241 units sold for the whole top 10 list of software in Japan for this week.

When digital sales were included, 4.05 million copies of the game were sold in Japan overall, according to a Nintendo release.

With the release of the game came a noticeable increase in Switch hardware sales, which saw a total of 170,693 units sold as opposed to 97,542 the week before.

More than 100,000 of the 170,000 Switch consoles sold last week in Japan were OLED variants, which suggests that this may have been caused by the recently launched limited-edition Switch devices with a Pokemon Scarlet and Violet theme.

With 10 million units sold worldwide in the first 72 hours, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet achieved “the best global sales level for any game on any Nintendo platform inside the first three days,” according to Nintendo.

In our assessment of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet for VGC, we noted that despite having the greatest features in years, the games had some technical difficulties.

The full Famitsu top 10 for the week ending November 20 is as follows (total sales in brackets):

1. Pokemon Scarlet & Violet (Switch) – 2,537,292 (2,537,292)
2. Splatoon 3 (Switch) – 36,958 (3,368,155)
3. God of War Ragnarok (PS5) – 9,901 (39,278)
4. Monochrome Mobius (PS4) – 9,066 (9,066)
5. Tactics Ogre Reborn (Switch) – 7,687 (44,470)
6. Minecraft (Switch) – 7,449 (2,855,406)
7. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Switch) – 7,330 (4,906,589)
8. Cardfight!! Vanguard Dear Days (Switch) – 6,649 (6,649)
9. SympathyKiss (Switch) – 6,072 (6,072)
10. Sonic Frontiers (Switch) – 5,837 (31,904)

The hardware sales for the week ending November 20 are as follows (total sales in brackets):

1. Nintendo Switch OLED – 102,605 (3,083,839)
2. Nintendo Switch Lite – 40,432 (4,970,529)
3. Nintendo Switch – 27,656 (18,866,523)
4. PlayStation 5 – 26,946 (1,848,649)
5. PlayStation 4 – 5,803 (7,826,141)
6. PlayStation 5 Digital Edition – 4,912 (291,848)
7. Xbox Series X – 1,373 (168,640)
8. Xbox Series S – 154 (212,419)
9. New Nintendo 2DS XL – 34  (1,189,185)