Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire biggest UK launch in series history
It seems that people just can’t see to get enough of Pokemon. Despite the first entry arriving in 1996, the 18-year-old franchise is still going strong with the recent release of Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire having broken the record for the biggest launch of any Pokemon game in the UK. According to Eurogamer, the sales for the two games have beaten the previous record set by Pokemon X and Y by an impressive 17%.
Omega Ruby made it to sixth in the UK charts while its sister game Alpha Sapphire made it to seventh overall. The Pokemon games were only beaten by Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Grand Theft Auto 5. Far Cry 4 and the ever present FIFA 15. The other big Nintendo release didn’t perform so well, with Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS only managing to reach thirteenth in the charts.
It shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that the game shave performed so well commercially though. The series is the second best selling video game franchise of all time, only Nintendo Mario series has managed to sell more copies. It is estimated that around 260 million units of Pokemon games have sold.
The new games are remakes of the third generation titles Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire. Speculation that enhancements of the games would be made had been growing for some time, following enhanced versions of Red and Blue along with Gold and Silver. They released November 21 and received positive reviews from the vast majority of critics, currently holding a score of 83 on Metacritic.