 This week, Pokemon Legends Arceus arrives. I'm sure you guys have heard it by now, right? The game's already been livestreamed by some people playing illegal copies or copies of Alpha Truck or from retailers that ended up handing out copies ahead of time, even though they weren't supposed to. Whatever the reason might be, people are playing this game, it's been fully leaked, the hype has been building, and yeah, the hype is going to continue to build because the game comes out on Friday. It's at the top of the charts in almost every single e-shop in every single country at the moment. Well, stop! Nate, stop! Before you talk about Legends Arceus, remind them that you're giving away three copies of it, right? There's a link down in the description for that. Oh, you're also giving away an Xbox, PlayStation, or Switch OLED, right? Like, console of choice? Yeah, that's our giveaway for the month of February that you can already enter now through the Glean.io link as well down in the description or the pinned comment. So, alright guys, whatever. I don't want to interrupt your Pokemon Legends Arceus hype anymore, take it away. And, well, it's actually getting really hard to find copies of it in-store. If you actually try to pre-order a physical copy of the game, a lot of stores will just tell you, no, at least here in the United States. Whoa! Hey folks, this is your friendly neighborhood, Nate, interrupting yet again. Sorry, sorry, I had to mention something here. We just got partnered with a new affiliate program for Pokemon Legends Arceus at Best Buy. If you do not have your pre-order in yet, please use our affiliate link or at least consider using our affiliate link in the description or the pinned comment down below, because right now, Nintendo and Best Buy have partnered with my channel to kick back 22% of that Pokemon Legends pre-order back to the channel. 22%. That's insane. So, if your local Best Buy still has copies or still have pre-orders online, please give that link a click. I would greatly appreciate it. Alright, back to your content. Why? Because they've sold out of their pre-orders. It's unfathomable to think a game in today's environment, a standard addition, could sell out. And yet, here we are and Pokemon Legends Arceus is sold out at GameStop, at Walmart, at Target, at Best Buy, and even my local gaming generations. All of them are sold out. And I know because today I tried to go pre-order. You might go, Nate, why didn't you pre-order sooner? I've never had a problem pre-ordering physical games the week it's coming out. I didn't think I would have to worry about not being able to walk into a store day one and buy a copy of Pokemon Legends Arceus. But this is legitimately going to be a problem on Friday, where most retailers are just not going to have copies besides retailers that don't take pre-orders. And even then, they're probably going to be sold out in the first hour at this rate. Pokemon Legends Arceus is selling extremely well. I think we've known this for a while. I talked about where it was ranking on Amazon sales charts weeks ahead of time earlier. So yeah, we obviously know Pokemon Legends Arceus is going to sell well. But here's the thing. I just got some exclusive information on how well Pokemon Legends Arceus is going to sell. And what if I told you pre-order numbers have this tracking ahead of Pokemon Sword and Shield? Have it tracking ahead of Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee? Have it tracking ahead of Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl? Have it tracking ahead of Monster Hunter Rise? Oh, Animal Crossing New Horizons, right? That's had the best first 10-day launch of all time. It might be tracking at that same level. Let's get into the information I got. I get it from all from Paul Gale Network. I'm not going to go over where Paul Gale Network actually gets his information from. These are privileged, exclusive sources of his. I have done the verifications and I know what's going on. I'm not going to go into why you should believe him. I'll just say he's extremely well connected from connections he has made over his last however many 30 years in the industry. He is one of the most well connected people I know and every time he's giving me sales data, it's turned out to be correct. So let's dive into it. He says, hey Nate, are you ready for Pokemon Legends Arceus? This was in a DM he sent me. The game is tracking higher in pre-orders than Monster Hunter Rise and both pairs of Pokemon games on Nintendo Switch. Those debuted at 4 million, 6 million, and 6 million respectively on their opening weekends. Should the word of mouth be strong and pre-orders continue to rise, Arceus only might be second to Animal Crossing in opening sales on Nintendo Switch. Almost guaranteed this game will be sold out in stores. And I already talked about, by the way, how it is sold out already at most retailers who won't even take pre-orders anymore. These leaks, though never desirable, are helping the game in a way because since the title does appear to be of great quality, it's giving ease of mind to on-the-fence buyers and making them pre-order. Animal Crossing did something like 9.6 million in its opening weekend and 11.77 million officially in the first 11 days. So if Arceus is anywhere in the 7 million range, that would be a tremendous achievement. It might not and could end up being in the low 6 million range, but man, it's looking really good. So let's think about that for a moment. Pokemon Legends Arceus is tracking behind the scenes to sell better than all current Pokemon games. Pokemon Sword and Shield, by the way, moved over 20 million units and is tracking ahead of that and the game isn't even here yet. Holy shit. Guys, I think they did it. Now, we'll have official figures, you know, of launch figures a week or two after it comes out. We'll obviously have the full, you know, montage whenever Nintendo does their first fiscal update, but here's the thing. Holy crap, guys. I think Game Freak, the Pokemon company and Nintendo actually did it. They released a mainline core Pokemon game that not only is fundamentally changing the way Pokemon has been played, it's fundamentally changing the way Pokemon games release. One release, not two titles split up, gonna be outselling dual release Pokemon games. At least at launch. Obviously, we don't know what the long trail of sales will be. Will this become a massive evergreen title like Animal Crossing and Mario Kartens will tune? And we don't know. Like, that's a lot to project in the future on how evergreen this title will be. But hot damn. Pokemon Legends Arceus, outselling all other Pokemon games at launch, outselling Mites of Rise, possibly getting up into the Animal Crossing New Horizons range? Are you kidding? I mean, this game's gonna easily cross 10 million before the end of March. Easily. Possibly 15 million at that rate. I'm stoked. And the reason I'm stoked is because I'm starting to formulate an opinion on this game that's dangerous because I haven't gone hands-on. I have not downloaded any ROM files. I have not tried to play the game on an emulator, but I've watched a lot of gameplay. And this game is holding up so far from what I have seen to every expectation I could ever possibly have for it. Look, still might not be the prettiest looking game on the planet. Might not even be the best looking Pokemon game. Obviously, new Pokemon Snap looks incredible. But my word, if this game is what we all hope it can be, then Pokemon Legends Arceus might become the best selling Pokemon game of all time. I want you to just entertain that thought for a moment. That this could be the best Pokemon's ever done sales-wise, and who knows, maybe even game-wise. Obviously, personal opinions on what's the best Pokemon game is always gonna vary person to person. Some people might say Gen 1, some people might say X and Y, some people might say Black and White, Black and White 2, Gen 4, you know, whatever. Everyone's gonna have their Sword and Shield, you know, everyone's gonna have their personal taste. And some people are gonna say Pokemon Legends Arceus is the best Pokemon game of all time. I might be one of those people. We'll see when I play it. But my lord, is this game not like, we always knew the game was gonna sell well, right? Like Pokemon Legends Arceus, the Pokemon game. I mean, we're talking animal crossing like numbers. Holy shit! I'm just, I'm trying to let that sink in right now. Animal crossing like number potential for launch. Now, I don't know if it'll be the best selling Switch game of all time. I think it would be pretty hard to top Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. But man, this could be a top three, top four best selling game on Switch. And like, here's the thing. Throughout this, you know, little talk we've been having, you've been watching brand new footage from a brand new trailer drop today. Don't worry, none of the footage showed today is considered spoilers. It's all official marketing material from Nintendo, Game Freak, and the Pokemon Company. But man, does this game not look great? Does it not look like what you hoped Pokemon would be? I don't know about you, but when I was a kid, a wee little lad, I sat back and dreamed of what Pokemon could be one day. Gen 1 amazing, cool, Gen 2 great, but I had this back in the mind dream of this 3D world, like Ocarina of Time, where you could just freely roam and bump into Pokemon. And those Pokemon will interact with you as a trainer or as a human, not just a static Pokemon that you throw balls at, but a world to explore. And you might go, Pokemon's had this. Just wait. What Legends Arceus is doing has never been done in Pokemon before. And while we can be critical of various aspects, heck I'm seeing people critical of the size of the Pokemon in the game at this point. It's fine. Have your criticisms. Critique can be good. But let's not forget how ambitious this game is. How, at least for me, in my mid 30s when I played Pokemon when I was 12, that this is exactly what I've been waiting for pretty much my entire life. So this Friday, Pokemon Legends Arceus graces us. And maybe it ends up not being everything we want it to be. I've seen a lot of footage, but you know what? Maybe the footage lies. Maybe the actual gameplay experience of playing doesn't hold up. Maybe it's empty. Maybe it's just not fun. But there's that chance that it is. Everything that I've wanted it to be. There's that chance that they finally made the Pokemon game I've been dreaming of. And it's that chance that makes me more excited for a Pokemon release this Friday than I have ever been in my entire life. Pokemon Legends Arceus is a dream. Except it's real. And it's coming out on Friday. Hope to see all of you there. Tonight we're streaming Pokemon Brilliant Diamond. It's our final stream. We're getting our eighth gym badge and going on to try to beat the Elite Four. And then this Friday we are live streaming Pokemon Legends Arceus. Don't know when the stream is happening yet. Could be during the day. Could be all day into the night. I don't know. It could be an extra long stream. Beats me. I haven't sorted out those details yet. Looks like I'm probably going to have to get the game digitally, which there's nothing wrong with that. Technically you could play the game sooner digitally anyways. But unless you're like your retail copy arrives early, but then you still got to be careful with live streams then because Pokemon Company will be like no, no ban your channel. No, but whatever. Soon as it's available to play digitally, we're going to be on top of that. Anyways, thank you guys so much for tuning in. I am Nathaniel Robledance from The Tender Prime, and I'll catch you in the next one.