A fundamental practice of any business is to create products that people will buy and continue to create more of that product until people stop buying it. It is none other than Nintendo who seems to have built their entire business foundation on the grounds of this premise. This is proven with the seeming immortality of the company’s most iconic characters and franchises.
Last month, at the end of the last fiscal year, Nintendo released an updated version of their best-selling software across all of their current gaming devices. What came as a surprise was that Pokémon’s latest 2013 releases of X and Y were the leading product of their hand held 3DS. Reaching a total of almost 14 million copies and making up more than a quarter of sales, the almost two-year-old game has managed to maintain a 14 percent lead over the much more recent Super Smash Bros. for 3DS.
Since its release in 1996, Pokémon has been a contributing factor to people buying Game Boys. According to an article published on Polygon.com, the Pokémon videogame franchise has sold more than 260 million copies worldwide since its introduction. Additionally the X and Y releases of the franchise sold nearly 12 million copies globally within their first four months.
These numbers are also responsible for the success of the 3DS, which was reported to have sold at least 52 million units last fiscal year. While Mario, Luigi, and Link have all made the list, they have been dwarfed by both the sales of X and Y as well as the newer Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire releases from November 2014, which when combined make up 46 percent of all sales on the 3DS.
Big titles have always vital to the success of their respective gaming platforms, this can be seen with Halo influencing Xbox sales, and Metal Gear influencing PlayStation sales, but as it has been proven time and time again by Nintendo and their numerous franchises that, If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.