Last week, The Pokémon Company released
Pokémon X and Pokémon Y for the Nintendo
3DS. In Japan, the pair of games collectively
sold 1.86 million copies at retail in their first
week on the market.
Additionally, Japanese sales tracker Media
Create provide a very interesting tidbit about
the two games in their latest weekly sales
report: The majority of people that bought
Pokémon X and Pokémon Y at launch in Japan
were college students, the reason being that
school kids have been busy with exams.
This demonstrates the continuation of an
ongoing trend. Since the release of Pokémon
HeartGold/SoulSilver , the Pokémon audience
has gradually been expanding to include more
older players. In fact, at the time of Pokémon
Black/White’s launch in 2010, first-week sales
were divided among a broad spectrum of
gamers ranging from very young children to
people aged 19 – 24.
So, in the case of Pokémon X and Pokémon Y,
where school kids were preoccupied with
exams, Pokémon’s older fanbase picked up the
slack. In the weeks ahead, it should be
interesting to see how sales hold up, since
more kids will be free to buy the games, and
Media Create recently reported that Monster
Hunter 4 has begun selling to younger players
now, too. That means the two games will likely
initially compete with each other for people’s
money.
Food for thought:
Interestingly, Animal Crossing has been
following the same trend as Pokémon , and
amassing a greater number of players between
the ages of 19 – 24. The primary difference is
that a greater portion of Animal Crossing’s
audience consists of women.
