It should come as no surprise to anyone who has been following our weekly sales updates for Japan, but the highest selling game of the year in the country was Pokemon Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon– something that it managed with a late November release. I’d say that is impressive, but this is Pokemon, so it’s not, really.

Number 2 was, yet again predictably, Splatoon 2, which edged out the 3DS version of Dragon Quest 11. Monster Hunter XX on 3DS follows, for a top four on the charts dominated entirely by Nintendo platforms; the PS4 version of Dragon Quest 11 is the lone PS4 game in the top five, with Super Mario Odyssey, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on Switch, Pokemon Sun/Moon, and for some obscene and perverse reason, Super Mario Maker for 3DS, rounding out the top ten.

This year should be especially interesting for Japanese charts- with several high profile PS4 games launching in the territory, including, of course, Monster Hunter World. What will the charts look like next year? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Satoru Iwata, the former President of Nintendo, wasn’t just a corporate suit- he was a game developer himself, and a genius programmer. One of his greatest feats of programming wizardry have to do with Pokemon Gold/Silver, the second, and most beloved, games in the long running franchise.

Apparently, Game Freak was having a lot of trouble getting the data for the games to fit on a cartridge- so Iwata came along and compressed the data so effectively that there was excess space left on the cart, space that Game Freak then used to put Kanto from Pokemon Red/Blue into them. Given that the presence of Kanto in the games is one of the reasons they are so beloved, Iwata is in large part responsible for the most loved Pokemon game existing as it does.

Apparently, Game Freak has not forgotten- and in the new Pokemon games, UltraSun/UltraMoon, they have slipped in a heart warming tribute to him. In every Pokemon game, you can visit an in game version of Game Freak. In UltraSun/UltraMoon, the developers at Game Freak say- well, I’ll let you see for yourself.

It’s a really touching tribute to a great, great man. Pokemon UltraSun/UltraMoon are out now on Nintendo 3DS.

#ThanksIwata pic.twitter.com/4U1YSqOwr0

— Joe Merrick (@JoeMerrick) November 23, 2017

The newest Media Create report is out, and as anyone who knows anything would tell you, when a new Pokemon game releases in Japan, it tops the charts- even if it is an expanded re-release of a game that’s just a year old, on a platform that’s on its way out. Therefore, yes, Pokemon UltraSun/UltraMoon ended up topping sales charts, with the top two spots claimed by the two SKUs for the game, and cumulative sales coming to over a million units sold.

On the hardware front, the Switch dominated with 87,000 units sold; the 3DS, buoyed by Pokemon, came in second, with 43,500 units, while the PS4 was third place with 26,000 units sold. Meanwhile, Star Wars Battlefront 2 saw a catastrophic decline in first week sales, with only 39,000 units sold, next to over 120,000 that the 2015 game sold- looks like EA really poisoned the well on this game.

It was a great week for sales- and as we move into the Holiday season, it will be interesting to see how hardware and software sales in Japan continue to perform over the next few weeks.

[via ResetEra]

Niantic has decided to add a bit of cross promotion for the upcoming Pokemon UltraSun/UltraMoon to its ever popular hit mobile game, Pokemon GO– you see, this week, they’ve added new clothing to the game, so that you can dress up your character in Alolan themed garb. Alola, of course, being the region that Pokemon UltraSun/UltraMoon take place in.

The best part? The clothes are free, so you can just pick them up and get dressed. You don’t have to spend any Pokecoins on them. That said, they do come with preset colors, so you won’t be able to pick out the colors you want to rock with them- it’s take it or leave it. Which is a bit sad, but hey, free is free.

Pokemon UltraSun/UltraMoon is almost here; it will be launching exclusively on the Nintendo 3DS on November 17; Pokemon GO is available now on iOS and Android smart devices around the world.

Nintendo and The Pokemon Company shared a brand new trailer for the upcoming Pokemon UltraSun/UltraMoon, greatly expanded versions of last year’s hit Nintendo 3DS exclusive Pokemon Sun/Moon, today. The trailer showed off a bunch of surprises that are bound to get long time fans of the series excited for the new games.

The primary, headlining thing we learned here was the return of Team Rocket, and their mastermind Giovanni, in the game- he will be heading Team Rainbow Rocket, and will be joined by Lysandre, Ghetsis, and Cyrus, whom you may remember as the antagonists from other Pokemon games. What his motives are is currently unknown- but obviously, they can’t be good.

We will also be getting the return of some classic legendaries, including Ho-oh, Lugia, and Mewtwo, in the game, all of which we can capture by going through Ultra Wormholes. It sounds like Pokemon players will have a lot to dig into with Pokemon UltraSun/UltraMoon when they launch on November 17 exclusively on the Nintendo 3DS.

Pokemon UltraSun/UltraMoon launches on the Nintendo 3DS exclusively on November 17- but for many series fan, the games are just a warm-up act in advance of the actual show that will be Pokemon on Nintendo Switch, which was confirmed at E3 this year.

However, there have been many who have wondered just how Game Freak (who aren’t a big development house to begin with) are juggling the development of UltraSun/UltraMoon with the still unnamed Switch game- would the 3DS game not be taking staff away from the development off the Switch title? Is the Switch game farther out than we might think?

Speaking to GameSpot, producer Shigeru Ohmori explained how Game Freak is tackling these projects simultaneously.

“Of course we have a limited number of staff available to us, but we have a very varied staff within the company,” he said. “We have younger staff members and also veterans who have been working on the series for a long time, very technically gifted staff members. We want to use these staff in the best way possible. For example this time with UltraSun and UltraMoon we can treat it mainly as a project for our younger staff to work on and grow and develop their skills, while perhaps the more veteran, established members of the company can work on the upcoming [Switch] project.

“That’s an approach we often take: having a growth-based project for younger staff members and then a new project for the existing veterans. Using this project management style ensures all of our projects have a positive effect on one another as they go.”

It sounds like a reasonable division of labor, that’s for sure, and it is a tried and tested development technique- allocate a less important project to newer developers so that they can cut their teeth on it before they graduate to working on the flagship projects. It will be interesting to see how this is reflected in the final quality for both, UltraSun/UltraMoon, and Pokemon on Switch.

Even as hype for the upcoming Pokemon UltraSun/UltraMoon continues to mount, there has been a lot of uncertainty surrounding exactly what the game is supposed to be in the first place. The fact that it’s two games caused many to assume it might be like Black 2 and White 2, which were direct sequels to their predecessors- but Game Freak has steadfastly refused to refer to it as such.

Is it an expanded version (in the vein of Platinum and Emerald) then? If so, why are there two games? In a new interview with Famitsu, (via Siliconera), Pokémon Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon producer Shigeru Ohmori and director Kazumasa Iwao confirmed that the game is meant to be an alternate story from the story in the original Sun/Moon. Not only that, they pointed out that the game will in fact have double the story content and volume than the original games, citing new actors and locations as evidence of the substantial and hefty modifications coming with the new games.

Game Freak also teased that UltraSun/UltraMoon will be far more substantial updates to the original games than something like Pokemon Platinum was, teasing a hefty post game as well. They also confirmed that the game will let players catch Legendary Pokemon that were not available in the original Sun/Moon, citing Mewtwo as one example.

All of this sounds good- and it sounds like UltraSun/UltraMoon may be the definitive versions of last year’s flawed Sun/Moon when they finally launch exclusively on the Nintendo 3DS on November 17 worldwide.

While storage space considerations are not as much of an issue on the Nintendo 3DS, a platform where most game sales are digital and a platform where most games are actually rather small in terms of file size, there is no doubting that even the most disengaged 3DS owner might now be running out of space. The system itself comes with no on board memory (though Nintendo bundles a 4GB SD card with each of them)- which, as it turns out, is going to be just enough for you to buy and install Pokemon UltraSun or UltraMoon to yours digitally.

Amazon Japan has revealed the file size for the highly anticipated upcoming Pokemon game on the system, confirming that it will be 3.6 GB (or 29,500 blocks in the 3DS’s ridiculous parlance). For reference, Pokemon Sun/Moon took up 3.2 GB- so I wonder where the extra 400MB are coming from.

Pokemon UltraSun/UltraMoon are due out exclusively on the Nintendo 3DS on November 17.

[via NintendoSoup]

Little has been known about Pokemon UltraSun/UltraMoon since their reveal back in June. However, yesterday, we finally got some brand new information about the upcoming titles, and we finally know what to expect from these games.

The newest entries in the series are an expansion of last year’s Pokemon Sun/Moon. They feature expanded gameplay mechanics, an alternate and expanded story, and even some new Pokemon in the form of new Ultra Beasts. They also feature what can only be described as the cutest thing in a valley of Pikachu. Seriously, it’s adorable.

That apart, there will be new customization options for the characters, too. You can check all of it out for yourself below in the new gameplay video. Pokemon UltraSun/UltraMoon will be releasing exclusively on the Nintendo 3DS this November. Switch owners, you don’t have to worry- a brand new Pokemon RPG is already in development for the system, and hopefully we get to see more of it soon.

Pokemon UltraSun/UltraMoon will be a remix of last year’s Pokemon Sun/Moon. They’re due out in November this year, but so far, we have heard shockingly little about them- usually this close to release, Nintendo and The Pokemon Company are sharing weekly updates about an upcoming game.

However, we finally got a brand new trailer for the game today, which you can see for yourself below. The trailer is short, but it gives us a glimpse at the new region map (it’s still Alola, but it looks like some things have been changed), some gameplay footage, including a new form of Lycanroc (the evolved form of Rockruff), and it shows us the new trainer characters we will be playing as in the game.

You can check out the game’s trailer for yourself below. Pokemon UltraSun/UltraMoon is due out on the Nintendo 3DS this November; a new Pokemon game for the Nintendo Switch is also due to launch next year.