Pokémon Scarlet and Violet may not be remembered among the best chapters of the long-running Game Freak series, yet in terms of sales they are beating the records of many of the previous chapters. According to the latest data shared by Nintendo, the ninth generation games have reached 25.29 million copies sold worldwide.
Those numbers are impressive on their own, but they’re even more impressive when you consider that Scarlet and Violet are now the third fastest pair of games to reach the 25 million-copy milestone. Not only that, they’re well on their way to matching and surpassing Pokémon Sword and Shield, which, according to Nintendo’s official data, sold 26.35 million copies in the last quarter.
The lowest rated game pair in the series
In short, a remarkable commercial success as well as peculiar, considering that Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are among the least appreciated games of the main series by fans and critics. On Metacritic they have an average score of 72: it is the lowest metascore ever reached by the main franchise. The situation does not improve when considering the user rating, equal to 3.5 out of 10.
A glimpse of the Paldea Region from Pokémon Scarlet and Violet
Among the main criticisms we find those of the technical sector, not only very backward, but which also shows its flank to performance problems and low resolution textures, and an open world formula that does not seem to have convinced all players.
