Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, God of War Ragnarok… this week’s business news

news business Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, God of War Ragnarok… this week’s business news

Pokemon Scarlet/Purple Signs: Biggest exclusive launch ever for consoles

The Pokémon Tidal Wave is back and hitting harder than ever. 10 million sales in three days, including 4 million in Japan alone (ie the best launch in the history of the archipelago), this is the historic feat achieved by the Pokémon Scarlet / Purple tandem, despite its technical problems that have earned it many criticisms. As announced by Nintendo in its communiqueit is that best launch in the history of Nintendo games, all consoles together. But it’s also generally the biggest launch signed by a console exclusive.

Last January, Pokémon Legends Arceus found 6.5 million buyers in its first week, while Pokémon Sword/Shield had started with 6 million copies in November 2019 until reaching 25.37 million sales according to the latest figures (September 30, 2022). The license’s best-selling opus remains Pokémon Red/Blue/Green, with 31.05 million copies sold.

With this cannon run, Pokémon Scarlet/Purple will settle into the environment very quickly classification of The 10 greatest hits of the switch… in which there are already three other Pokémon games : Sword/Shield as mentioned above, Sparkling Diamond/Sparkling Pearl (14.92 million), and Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee (14.84 million). The ranking continues to be dominated by Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (48.41 million) and Animal Crossing New Horizons (40.17 million), which have a good lead over Super Smash Bros Ultimate (29.53 million) and Zelda Breath of the Wild ( 27.79 million).

God of War Ragnarök: 5.1 million sales in 5 days, a new record for a Sony game

God of War: Ragnarok enters the Pantheon. The Santa Monica Studio game has those best release in PlayStation Studios historyas announced by Sony on his social networks. It was released on PS5 and PS4 on November 9th (ie on a Wednesday and not on a Friday as usual with Sony exclusives) and is gone 5.1 million copies in five daysfar exceeded the previous record of The Last of Us Part II in July 2020 (4 million sales in three days). It also surpasses the launches of Marvel’s Spider-Man (3.3 million), God of War 2018 (3.1 million), Uncharted 4 (2.7 million), Horizon Zero Dawn (2.6 million) and Ghost of Tsushima (2.4 million). Note that we are talking here about sales to consumers and not about copies being distributed to resellers. As a reminder, the previous God of War recently hit 23 million sales on PS4 and PC.

Sony wants to conquer the Chinese market

Sony is restarting its China Hero Project program, which started in 2016 and then was suspended due to the health crisis. His goal : Participate in funding and promoting games developed by Chinese studios. During a presentation organized in Chengdu, the company announced the implementation of the third “phase” of the project, which will make this possible ten games should receive financial support of at least 1 million yuan (136,000 dollars).. Some titles even benefit from it PlayStation Studios support and is published directly by Sony, as the action game Lost Soul Aside and the cooperative TPS Convallaria. The program has already spawned seven games, namely Animal Force, ANNO: Mutationem, FIST: Forged in Shadow Torch, Hardcore Mecha, Immortal Legacy, In Nightmare and The Walker. But other titles announced in the previous phases have not yet seen the light of day.

Sony used this announcement to speak more generally about its ambitions towards the Chinese market. The firm hopes sell twice as many PS5s as PS4s. The latter has sold more than 3.5 million copies The next-gen console was at 670,000 in March 2022what it still sounded like sixth largest market behind the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany and France.

Tatsuo Eguchi, President of Sony Interactive Shanghai, also pointed out that the success of Genshin Impact has convinced the company’s management to invest more resources in China than before. The same Genshin Impact would have pushed Microsoft to seriously turn to this market to sign agreements and find the next Chinese nugget.after an article by Reuters released last month.

Briefly in the business news of the week

• Ubisoft will be releasing its games on Steam again, starting with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla on December 6, then Anno 1800 and Roller Champions on unspecified dates. Since April 2019 and the launch of Starlink Battle for Atlas, the company has not released any new games on the Valve platform, preferring its Ubisoft Connect Launcher (formerly uPlay) and the Epic Games Store.
• Chinese giant NetEase will fund the first game from the Rebel Wolves studio, headed by The Witcher 3 director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz. It will be a single-player, narrative-driven dark fantasy RPG that will be released on consoles and PC.
• NieR Automata has exceeded 7 million sales (6.5 million in June), while NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139… is at 1.5 million (1 million in June 2021).

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