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Pokemon Leads Game Sales Up 31% in May
Gamasutra has several coverage elements about last month's NPD figures, which unsurprisingly show Nintendo's continued dominance of console sales numbers. A combined 569,000 units sold for Pokemon Diamond and Pearl probably helped some. "According to official sources and a number of independent reports, total industry sales were up 49 percent to $815 million for the month, with hardware sales up 79 percent to $221 million, and the Nintendo DS selling an impressive 423,000 units for the month. The rest of the hardware sales revealed that the Wii sold an impressive 338,000 units for the month, with the Xbox 360's sales down somewhat at around 155,000 units and the PlayStation 3 sold just 82,000 during May in the U.S. On the handheld side of things, the PSP trailed the DS but still sold around 221,000 units, and the Game Boy Advance sold just 80,000 units for the month. Rounding off the major players, the PlayStation 2 sold 188,000 units during May." Those DS sales are nothing to sneeze at, as an analyst group estimates that by 2011 there will be some 112 Million DS units sold ... with an 89% install base in Japan. The site has a further breakdown of last month's numbers, analyzing the dip in overall console sales and the potentials of each platform. The Curmudgeon Gamer is the mind behind that analysis, and he had two further points to make about the numbers on his site.
It may be an old, rehashed concept, but the new Pokemon games are great RPG's once you get over the kiddy factor of them. The 3D graphics in the new ones especially are really cool. One thing they really should have fixed up is those damn 8 bit sounds when a Pokemon makes a noise - surely there would be enough space on the DS GameCard to store the Pokemon's noises from the TV Anime series - like Pikachu
Shoe vs. Lambtor ... Discuss!
Pokemon has made a resurgence among my classmates in the last two years. Everyone is playing the new Pokemon Pearl/Diamond, and there's a few 'retro' people like me that still play the original Blue and Silver versions. Sure, it may be a kids game, but when high school seniors are playing and enjoying updated versions of a game, I think we can all agree that Nintendo did something right with this franchise (although the anime series is lacking).
The gap is closer to a thousand, actually. Gamasutra rounded all the numbers to the nearest thousand except for the GBA, which they rounded to the nearest ten thousand for some reason. There were 81,604 PS3s and 80,554 GBAs sold according to the numbers I saw.
I think licensed games are still being made for the GBA, but I'm not sure if any original stuff still is.
While I personally never got swept up by the whole Pokemon craze, I must admit the couple games that I have played (Blue and Red) were addictive and VERY fun.
I can only imagine the newer ones sticking to the same formula but with updated technology are just as addictive and fun.
Living With a Nerd
I consider myself an average Slashdot reader. I love Linux and Google, and hate Microsoft and Sony. I also play Pokemon.
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
I always liked the parts of the series I did play (Red, blue, yellow, silver and gold). It not only let me wax halycon about my old days of 8-bit bitmap dungeon crawls (a la Dragon Warrior). It provided a unique battle system, additional non-main story arc content, and a lot of replayability (as you spent a good time trying to catch all the pokemon available in your version). They also made an amazing marketing and PR move by releasing separate versions (red and blue, gold and silver, [some two based on gems], diamond and pearl), with different pokemon available on each one. Now, while some people just bought both and traded with themselves to catch them all (and some folks cheated via game genie or other such), some folks specifically bought different versions and used the game link cables to trade pokemon. Being able to do things with friends like that was really what made the pokemon games fun. It changed it from being just about what you could do alone, to being a social thing. I don't know about later games, but Red and Blue had balance problems (Psychic pokemon were way too powerful), but those problems were corrected by the time Gold and Silver came out. I think the series has really progressed and done a good job of adding new content, and keeping type balance.
Yeah, just throwing my hat into the ring as a slashdot reader who plays pokemon, unapologetically.
t tack-attack..." strings.) There is a surprisingly deep game under the cuteness, and you can actually talk about "high level play" in pokemon, and be completely serious.
I started because I write and design games for a living, and figured "if it's still around after all these years, there is probably somthing behind it." (That was back in the ruby/sapphire days.)
I kept playing, because under the cute presentation, is a surprisingly deep game, of the same nature as Magic the Gathering. (The game of "you have a wide library of abilities, and a limited number of slots to put them into; build a deck/monster/whatever. Oh, and the abilities combine in interesting ways.")
Pokemon actually manages to make turn-based RPG-style combat WORK in one-on-one battles. (Which almost always suck in RPGs, since they degenerate into "attack-attack-attack-attack-attack-heal-attack-a