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Pokémon Sword and Shield sold an astonishing 16m copies in six weeks

Tem to celebrate.

Pokémon Sword and Shield are off to a phenomenal start, with a combined 16.18m copies sold in the games' first six weeks.

To put that in perspective, Sword and Shield have already outsold the lifetime sales for many of the series' recent entries, such as Pokémon Sun and Moon (16.17m) and Pokémon: Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee (11.76m).

With more sales to be counted from after this financial period's 31st December cut-off (and a year-long Expansion Pass on the horizon), Sword and Shield are currently on track to become two of the largest-selling Pokémon games of all time - likely since Gold and Silver for Game Boy Color, back in 1999.

These figures come as part of a particularly rosy set of Nintendo financial results, which detail booming hardware and software numbers.

Luigi's Mansion 3 sold 5.37m (the series' best ever debut) while Fire Emblem: Three Houses sold 2.58m (putting it on track to become the series' best-selling title).

Ring Fit Adventure, Nintendo's oddball fitness game/peripheral, also sold well. More than 2.17m of the things are now out in the wild.

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Evergeen Nintendo Switch games have also continued to sell very well. As well as Pokémon, other games now above the 10m sales mark include Smash Bros. Ultimate (17.6m), Super Mario Odyssey (16.5m) and Zelda: Breath of the Wild (16.3m).

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, meanwhile, has become the Switch's first exclusive to sell more than 20m. Originally released in April 2017, it has now shifted 22.9m copies.

In total, Nintendo Switch software sales in the nine months ending 31st December 2019 were 123m (up 30 per cent year-on-year). Pretty, pretty good.

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