Few franchises in the history of video games have been as popular as the Pokemon series, and that was once again proven to be true earlier today. The Pokemon Company recently announced via Famitsu that the Pokemon franchise has now shipped over 300 million lifetime units since the series began over twenty years ago.
This total is both equal parts staggering and understandable considering the franchise’s popularity. The release of Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon helped push the series’ lifetime sales past this benchmark upon launching last week on the Nintendo 3DS.
It’s worth noting however that the total that makes up these 300 million units also include entries that don’t fall in the mainline series of Pokemon games. For example, titles like Pokemon Snap, Pokemon Ranger, and even Hey You, Pikachu! are added to the total number shipped. Any Pokemon game that has released between 1996 with the launch of Red and Green in Japan up until the release of Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon count towards the 300+ million.
The only other franchise that has shipped more units than Pokemon at this point would, of course, be that of Mario. Pokemania has been going strong for over twenty years at this point and it clearly shows no signs of stopping. We’ll see what the franchise’s next iteration will look like next year when we learn more about the the upcoming mainline Pokemon game for Switch.