How many copies of Pokemon Sun and Moon will be sold?

[Entermaid]

Pokemon XY was quite successful provided that upon launch there were only about 35 million 3DS consoles sold. Meaning, a greater percentage of 3ds console owners purchased pokemon XY than did Pokemon Diamond/Pearl and Pokemon Black/White did on the DS. It was highly successful at launch, outpacing some of its predecessors after two days, but after a few weeks sales settled a bit on the low side, but within the average range of sales since generation 3.

Gamefreak has been fairly consistent in maintaining sales since Ruby/Sapphire in the ~15-17.5 million range for the main-series titles which is impressive. Now that the 3DS has continued to survive as the only successful handheld gaming console and plans to extend its life with the updated New 3DS console (similar to the DSi compared to the DS) do you think Gamefreak will hit the ~15-17.5 again, or will Gamefreak shatter expectations and pull in sales from Pokemon Go'ers, assuming they are being successfully tuned back into their childhood love of Pokemon amid the 20th Anniversary craze and temporary return to pokemon as something considered "cool" ?

In short, how many copies of Sun and Moon do you think will be sold by generation 8 is encountered? Express any optimism and pessimism you may have. I'm curious to see what you guys think.

(Also, my guess is an optimistic 17.5 million assuming a few additional million sales are racked up from Go'ers.)

References

Pokemon Sales History

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Update: XY sales have reached 14.9 as of June 2016. We could round to 15 million by Sun and Moon launch.

Handheld Console History

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Update: 3DS sales are roughly up to 60 million.

 

[Iceshadow3317]

Pokemon and Nintendo confirmed that Pokemon Go made the sales for pokemon games explode.

That being said, there will probably be even more copies sold than possibly even Sinnoh. With it also being such a different game than what we are used to, I would say it could even Challenge Gold and Silver.

 

[Hikamaru]

Since Pokemon GO has proven to show people who haven't played Pokemon in years are getting back into the franchise, I believe Sun & Moon's sales will at least be higher than X/Y since I imagine the people who back in thanks to GO will hear about the new games and consider to try it out and see how far Pokemon has come.

Even if sales don't meet the numbers I'm predicting, I still think GO will play a big part in being beneficial to Sun & Moon's sales figures.

 

[Sabrewulf238]

It'll probably sell more copies than X & Y for two reasons:

1. It's near the end of the lifespan of the 3DS (yeah they say NX won't be replacing 3DS but that just sounds like they don't want to hurt 3DS sales), so at this point it's going to have as much of a userbase as it's ever going to have.

2. Pokemon Go. There's bound to be a lot of renewed interest in the series due to old fans coming back to the series after playing Pokemon Go or kids experiencing Pokemon for the first time due to Pokemon Go.

 

[blue]

Well taking into consideration the huge sucess of Pokemon Go, I think that could well have a positive influence on the sales of S/M. If you look at the recent global game sales for across all consoles including 3DS, PS4 and Xbox One during July 2016, ORAS & X/Y placed 2nd and 4th selling 101k copies and 67k copies respectively. Now unless that's a huge coincidence, this happens to be around the time that the Pokemon GO hype was in full swing which would explain why the 3DS titles have had a surge in sales despite being released over 2 years ago.

Another thing to note is that in 2013, the sales figure for the 3DS console was at around 35 million units during the time of the release for X/Y. As you've already mentioned, X/Y has reached 14.9m sales almost 3 years on from the release date. As it stands the 3DS has currently sold 58.7 million units which would mean there is more people with the console to buy either Sun or Moon which again would help boost the sales. Since we still have just under 3 months to go, the release of S/M will be around the holiday period which is when the sale figures of games and consoles reach their highest point in the year being so close to Christmas. It wouldn't surprise me if the 3DS hit the 60 million milestone by that time and I'd expect S/M to shift about 16 million copies.

 

[Sabrewulf238]

I was just thinking that it would probably be a smart move for them to have a huge update released for Pokemon Go just a little while before the release of Sun & Moon so they could bring back the hype for the Pokemon series again. Hype seems to wear off pretty quickly in the mobile games space...

Some might say they should add the 7th gen Pokemon, but I think adding the 2nd gen Pokemon would have a stronger affect on hype. At least at that point in time.

 

[Lunar]

Baring in mind the complete success of Go, I expect many people will give Pokemon another chance and after seeing the new graphics and features I strongly believe they will be enticed into buying Sun and Moon. Thinking about it, the average console game (I'm talking Xbox One, PS4 here) is £40-45 which is quite expensive, the cheaper price of a Pokemon game will be another factor in people purchasing these games - not to mention the release is in the holiday period.

Putting some of these factors together I think Sun and Moon will sell quite well, around the 16 million mark like Blue said but I do believe some of the sales do depend on how much hype is still around for Pokemon for the less hardcore fans in November.