 Pokemon Sword and Shield are proving to be some of the most controversial games ever released in the Pokemon franchise. I'm just talking about the mainline games including spinoffs, I know some people debate whether Let's Go is a spinoff or a mainline game, that was obviously fairly controversial last year just because of the gen 1 remake and the gen 1 remake with motion controls and all these things that people were thinking were to make the game a little bit too casual friendly. I personally enjoyed the games but what are you going to do, different strokes for different folks, they still finished at a Metacritic rating of 79 and 80 depending on which version you looked at. I know it's really weird that there's version specific reviews especially for those games which are practically the same game with different Pokemon but it is what it is. People generally thought those games were just okay, pretty good and they ended up selling almost 11 million units on Switch. It's not quite there yet but it probably will hit 11 million before it's all said and done but it's sold a majority of that, about 10 million of it, literally during the launch period. So it didn't really have a long tail of sales, 10 million something to scoff at that is higher than some prior games in the Pokemon franchise, it's the first time there's been a quote unquote mainline Pokemon game in HD but I don't know, it didn't have the tail of sales Pokemon usually has, it usually has a year or two of sales that just kind of continue especially since Pokemon Go has released on phones and has really reinvigorated people to buy Pokemon games. Sword and Shield came out last week and it's got review scores that are not exactly fantastic in comparison to the rest of the series. It's sitting at 81 right now on Metacritic, I don't know if it's going to go any lower than that, definitely doesn't feel like it's going to go any higher as more reviews are coming in. So it'll be interesting to see if it ever drops to an 80 but right now it's holding to 81 which is one of the worst rated Pokemon games in the series ever if you don't count the Let's Go games. And yet despite all of this, despite the poor reviews, despite the backlash I think we all know that there's a lot of backlash for these games, particularly the biggest backlash is over the no national decks but more than that there's been backlash over animations or in backlash over visuals, it's pretty undeniable there are times in this game that they are using some pretty low poly stuff, I think Digital Foundries actually went through the game now and has proven that Let's Go Pikachu and Let's Go Eevee at times are using some extremely low polygon count textures, things that feel like they might have been ripped from the 3DS, which is really weird in a game that's being displayed in 1080p but you know what, it is what it is, you know, hashtag Game Freaks Lazy or whatever people like to throw out there, you know, we're not developers on this game, we don't understand the tight scheduling, we don't understand the pressure they're under and it's weird too because Pokemon is one of the biggest IPs in the world and it feels weird to see the games which are a staple of that IP that's really got the entire IP going in the first place before the shows, kind of treated in a way like it's not a AAA game, does that make sense? It's almost an annual franchise at this point but it's not even treated like a AAA annual franchise like they used to do with Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty, it's kind of treated as like this B tier game but it's a B tier game that's more popular than almost anything else Nintendo has that comes out and I know Game Freak makes it and Nintendo only owns part of it but I mean it's an interesting situation with this massive IP where it's finally on home consoles and it doesn't necessarily feel like a home console game even though it might be the best Pokemon game ever made and that's up for the eye, the older reviews say it's not but you never know. So why are we talking about it now today, I haven't played the game, I can't go into my personal opinions whether the game is good or not yet or my adventures through the game which I want to log in a future video series even though I know the Pokemon company hates when people put up footage of Pokemon games so I'm really hoping that they let me get away with what I want to do with Pokemon and we'll see how well that goes and if you guys enjoy my little vlog series through the game but what I want to actually focus on here are the fact that maybe all of this is grossly exaggerated, there's been a lot of negative reactions, negative reviews, this and that but the sales for the game might be breaking records. Now we don't have official numbers in yet but we're hearing from retailers, I have some inside sources myself from a couple retailers, there's also some people on Twitter in particular at Benji Sales backing up this data and we do have some UK chart data officially as well from gameindustry.biz but it looks like Pokemon Sword and Shield not only shipped, more units to retailers worldwide then let's go Pikachu and let's go Eevee and potentially more than any other prior Pokemon game for launch, it looks like the sell through which is how many actually sold is going to do some pretty insane numbers. We're hearing things like in the United States alone with only one day of sales data that Pokemon Sword and Shield has sold 55% plus more in just the US alone than it has for let's go Pikachu and let's go Eevee on its first two days of sales. So there were two days charted back at launch and that's the two days that a majority of let's go Pikachu and let's go Eevee sold and then launch day alone Sword and Shield destroyed those numbers. Sword and Shield might become the best selling Pokemon game of all time and that's basically what we're talking about here and if it becomes the best selling, the fastest selling Pokemon game of all time, you know Nintendo, you know the Pokemon company, they're going to come out in a week or two here and tout that especially once all the figures are finalized everywhere, they're not finalized everywhere, we don't have final numbers in Japan and Europe and all that but we know in the UK it debuted higher than any other Pokemon game has debuted in quite some time. We know the games themselves cost $20 a piece more than any Pokemon game has ever cost it before and well not any Pokemon game but any Pokemon mainline entry game has so we already know it's going to probably be the highest grossing Pokemon game of all time just because it's 20 bucks more per copy or if you get the dual pack 40 bucks but what I think is interesting in this is it's not just that it's going to be a massive financial success no matter what happens no matter what negativity say it's that people are buying it anyways I heard a lot of Pokemon fans and this is the internet I heard a lot of Pokemon fans on the internet say that they're not going to buy these games they're going to boycott these games not because of their own national decks because it's not you know it's it's not a true revolutionary leap for Pokemon or we don't like this cut feature or this change feature to how online works from this to the y-com stuff and I hear you I hear all this critique I hear all this criticism but this might be a situation and we've seen situations like this before on the internet in particular where the minority is just out voicing the majority a majority of people that are interested in Pokemon a majority people that are going to buy a Pokemon I'm not even going to say that they're kids because I don't know that I don't have the statistics in front of me to prove that it's kids buying Pokemon although I know kids are still interested in Pokemon but what I do know is that if these sales figures are true if this thing's destroying let's go picture that's greedy if this thing has the potential to destroy ultrasound ultra moon and even the gen one games which I think still hold the top sales spot if it ends up selling 15 20 30 million units which would be insane I think 15 to 20 is probably more realistic but even if it gets 15 to 20 that would still be among the best selling Pokemon games ever I I got to say that it kind of feels like the naysayers are just the minority and don't be wrong everyone's opinion matters everyone's opinion on an individual level matters especially to that person like I can't sit here and tell you that you're going to love Pokemon Sword and Shield because that's going to be up to the individual some people can't get past something some people aren't going to like the bugs that are in the game I heard that there's a bug with how the data is handled with Wycom over people's wi-fi networks and even wired networks and it's affecting Roku sticks for some reason because the Wycom data packets are very similar to the data packets that come from Roku sticks and we use Roku all over my house so it's going to be interesting to see if it affects me Roku is apparently working on update for that by the way to change how their packets work so it can distinguish between the Pokemon packets and their packets because the Pokemon packets apparently the the biggest issue of Pokemon isn't that the packets are similar it's that even when you're not using your switch if it's just in sleep mode I guess Pokemon Sword and Shield always communicating to the internet even in sleep mode you have to literally power the switch all the way down so a lot of people are isn't that interesting too as well because the game doesn't really tell you that it's doing that by the way um but uh yeah so I don't know that's that's an issue there's been other bugs as well besides besides the complaints about low polygon stuff at times which I honestly think low polygon models and low polygon um things like uh that you know the bark on the trees uh that that that really that should be happening in in 2019 um and fans are obviously you know outraging um to the point that they're adding Pokemon back into the game right now they're working on adding in the Pokemon models from Let's Go Peach or Let's Go Eevee because those are all already in HD on switch uh and those are going to be a lot easier to add and then they've proven that over time fans are going to be able to restore the entire national decks to the game if people would like it to be obviously you have to hack your switch and all this stuff so I'm not saying you should do that but fans that care about it are making it happen anyways uh which some people think this proves a lazy game freaking the Pokemon company is I again I can't speak to the development cycle of the game I know some people are worried if game freaking players are happy if they're not happy there's a whole bunch of conflicting stories out there about that but what I do know is these games are selling incredibly well and I think it's completely overblown um some of this criticism I think a vast majority of people that play Pokemon or have interest in playing Pokemon games don't care about the national decks I don't think they care about the cut features I don't think they care about the new features as much either I think a vast majority of people who play Pokemon just like playing Pokemon for Pokemon they don't necessarily care about having a complete national decks they don't care about all these finer details they just care about turning on the game and having fun catching pocket monsters uh and using those pocket monsters in in battles and beating the story mode and maybe trading a few times with their friends I don't I think a majority of people that play Pokemon are just they're they're casual about it I guess for lack of a better term I think what happens when we're on the internet are the smaller portions of of a community get greatly enhanced and feel like they have a much grander voice than they probably do overall in this case I think a lot of the Pokemon fans that are speaking up are not not necessarily from the competitive Pokemon scene because that's a whole nother um you know a whole nother sector uh but I think they're from these hardcore fans uh that have probably been with Pokemon for decades uh if not at least the last decade and uh have these expectations they put on to the games that uh the Pokemon company and Game Freak haven't put on to them themselves now the national deck stuff is something they put on themselves and that's their own kerfuffle to deal with but I do think that a lot of the complaints a lot of this a lot of that is being greatly overblown by a minority of Pokemon fans on these Pokemon fans are probably the most passionate about Pokemon but I think that sales are proving um I think that everyone I'm talking to that's playing the game right now seems to be having a good time I think in general Pokemon Sword and Shield are going to be doing great going to be doing better than the series has maybe ever done and is going to prove to be almost fan favorites in a way now uh to give uh some credence of people who might enjoy the way Pokemon is example no national decks some people think there's too many Pokemon so no national decks gets rid of that gotta catch them all pressure of trying to catch you know 700 800 900 Pokemon however many there are now after Sword and Shield right it kind of relieves that pressure of needing to do that now you can just focus on the Pokemon that are in the games themselves right um you you can relieve some pressure um off of people who that care about that now I know some people say well I just carry them over game from games it's easy for me but not everyone's like that especially if you're a casual Pokemon fan you might not be transferring all your Pokemon game to game so then you might care that uh you know you don't have to catch you know 700 800 900 Pokemon um or trade form and all that to make it happen so I think that there's just a large contingency of Pokemon players that just don't give a crap about what reviews say they don't give a crap about what the hardcore Pokemon fans say they just care about themselves and having fun and I think a vast majority of people the 10 15 20 million people that end up buying Sword and Shield are going to be having a blast and the numbers are going to prove so large that uh Game Freak and the Pokemon company and Nintendo are going to want to repeat it again next year and the year after and the year after I think uh Pokemon is proving its sales power it's proving that um they don't have to necessarily go all in with a triple a budget and four years of development to do something crazy with the games to be a big seller like they kind of have to do with Zelda now Zelda will always sell well you're always going to get three four five million sales on a Zelda game just because it's a well-established IP and all the games are generally really fun even try four zeros but um you do know if you do spend the three four five years developing the game you can get a breath of the wild and sell 15 million which is something the franchise has never done before so there's an advantage uh to doing it both ways having your links awakenings or your link between worlds or whatever and then also having your giant four five year projects because they could serve uh different markets and you can get different types of profits along the way same with spin offs like hybrid warriors same with spin offs for pokemon you know there's there's a ton there's a billion spin offs for pokemon so I overall think the pokemon sword and shield are going to break records I think pokemon sword and shield is going to make a majority fans happy and to all the naysayers out there I guess it's almost too bad so sad um this isn't the pokemon game for you pokemon might never be what you want it to be again uh and all I could say is welcome to how I have felt for the last decade um I really enjoyed generation one and generation two of pokemon those are still my favorite generations of pokemon a generation one generation two um I enjoyed the series a bit in the third generation and the fourth generation and then something just happened I'm not sure what happened but ever since then uh pokemon has felt like it's drifting further and further away from me caring about it uh and there's a lot of reasons for this from the little little minute complexities that added in that I don't think need to be there and a whole bunch of other things that have just turned me off from the pokemon franchise and now if you're one of those hardcore fans it's going through that right now with sword and shield if you are feeling rejected by these games if you're feeling like this is just not what I want the future of the pokemon I'm on you know series based on all the interviews is just not what I want welcome to how I felt a decade ago um and I think sometimes we need to be okay letting it go as Elsa from frozen says not to be ironic but I've seen a frozen two comes out this week um sometimes you have to just let it go it's okay for a game to kind of move in a direction that you don't like it's just the way it is there are people that don't like the direction of Zelda with breath of the wild and it's okay to not like that direction but ultimately games are going to go in different directions for different reasons I obviously wish that they would do a huge massive budget on pokemon and create this massive breath of the wild style pokemon game but it's just probably not going to happen um we're going to get you know extensions of what they've done in the past they're going to keep trying to improve on it you know every generation in every game but you're just going to keep getting what pokemons always been uh maybe different this time around without the national deck so things are changing a bit but uh you're either going to fall out of love with pokemon and give up on the franchise and be done with it as a sort of shield or you're going to love it and keep playing it and I don't think there's a lot of middle ground in between so personally sword and shield is going to do fine and it's okay for you to move on to uh we all move on there are games I used to play I don't anymore and uh there's games I play right now that maybe I won't in the future so um for now I'm pretty excited to get my hands on sword and shield uh I have to figure out which one I'm buying um I know I screwed up last time and said like oh the red one is is this and that like I I the blue one is shield it's actually the sword whatever okay this shows you how little I've been paying attention at least I know what the the games are called right so uh explosive sales potentially record breaking critiques be damned anyway folks I'm Denner over just from the sort of problem thanks for tuning into this video this kind of discussion look at the aftermath of pokemon swords release um I hope you enjoyed it and uh I'll catch you guys in the next video