‘Pokémon Scarlet’ and ‘Violet’ outsold ‘God of War Ragnarok’’s launch week in 3 days

Despite complaints about the game’s poor technical performance, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet has been an enormous commercial success – outperforming God of War Ragnarok’s launch week sales in just three days.

• READ MORE: ‘Pokémon Scarlet & Violet’ Pokédex list: every confirmed Pokémon so far

The news comes from sales figures released by Nintendo, in which it revealed that Pokémon Scarlet and Violet has sold over 10million combined copies in the first three days after their launch on November 18.

That’s compared to the God of War Ragnarok’s launch week, in which it sold 5.1million copies, according to a tweet from PlayStation. Ragnarok is PlayStation’s fastest-selling first party launch in the company’s history, which speaks to the overwhelming popularity of Pokémon.

Scarlet and Violet have proven to be particularly successful, however. The games have outsold not only the previous entry to the franchise, Pokémon Legends: Arceus, but in fact the most successful global launch weekend in Nintendo history.

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Despite being critically well-received, fans and critics have heavily criticised Pokémon Scarlet and Violet for their performance issues, with a number of the games’ eye-catching bugs going viral on Twitter shortly after launch. The games suffer a wide array of issues, from inconsistent framerates and draw-distances to some outright bizarre bugs – issues that seemingly get worse during the game’s multiplayer mode.

God of War Ragnarok meanwhile has no such performance issues, and has been similarly warmly received – earning four stars in NME‘s review. While we were disappointed that Ragnarok doesn’t do much to innovate over the 2018 God of War reboot, the game’s art direction and combat system still received plenty of praise.

In other gaming news, CD Projekt Red has offered a look at the upcoming next-gen patch for The Witcher 3, which is due to release for Xbox Series X|S, PS5 and PC on December 14.