After 28 years, Pokemon Red and Green have been dethroned as the best-selling Pokemon games in Japan

Pokemon Red and Green are no longer the series’ best-selling games in Japan, as Pokemon Scarlet and Violet have now overtaken them.

Two years after their release in November 2022, Famitsu reports that Nintendo and Game Freak have sold more than 8.3 million copies of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet in Japan. That milestone means that the games have finally overtaken the domestic release of Pokemon Red and Green, which held the title of Japan’s best-selling Pokemon game since their launch in 1996.

It’s hard to get an exact sense of how many copies Red and Green have sold in Japan. As of 2022, the first three games – Red, Green, and Blue – had sold 10.23 million, but Blue was the international alternative to Green, and only released via public retail in 1999, three years after those first two. We can infer that Blue resulted in about 2 million Japanese sales, but that means it’s tricky to tell exactly when Scarlet and Violet overtook the original games.

Of course, these are just Japanese sales, so while Scarlet and Violet have finally set a new domestic record, they’ve got some distance left to cover over the international market. The most recent Pokemon games have shifted just under 25.7 million copies worldwide, which means they’ve got several million more copies to sell if they want to beat the international figure of 31 million set by the first-generation games.

Overall, however, it seems that the series is trending upwards. In August, Scarlet and Violet became only the third mainline Pokemon games to hit the 25 million sales milestone, after those first games and the other Nintendo Switch releases, Pokemon Sword and Shield. With Pokemon Z-A on its way and surely something coming to celebrate the series’ 30th anniversary in 2026, I’m sure Nintendo continues to be pretty happy with Pokemon’s results.

While you’re here, be sure to check out our ranking of the best Pokemon games.

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