Pokémon GBA games top Switch sales charts despite fan complaints over the price

For as much as some fans gripe about paying for Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen on Switch, far more of them have happily put down pre-orders.

A new Pokémon Presents showcase is being held this Friday to coincide with the franchise’s 30th anniversary. Before that, though, Nintendo’s already announced that re-releases of Game Boy Advance titles Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen will launch for Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 the same day.

Rather than add them to the Nintendo Switch Online’s retro library, however, these two games are being sold digitally, letting you buy them for £16.99 each, without needing an online subscription.

Plenty of people have taken umbrage with Nintendo’s decision to sell a pair of 22-year-old games for that much money. But like most Pokémon related complaints, it doesn’t matter because far more people are happy to pay up and that all but guarantees that Nintendo will repeat the practice in the future.

Despite the two games not launching for another few days, pre-orders are high enough for them to make it to the top of the Switch eShop sales charts, overtaking Minecraft and the far newer Pokémon Legends: Z-A.

FireRed is number one and LeafGreen is number two, probably because the former has Charizard on the cover, which is a much more popular pokémon than LeafGreen’s cover star Venusaur.

Clearly, most Pokémon fans think £16.99 is a reasonable price (and by Nintendo standards, it is) and considering they can have the games permanently installed on their Switch and make use of Pokémon Home to transfer their teams to future games, it’s a relatively alluring offer.

Although, curiously, any mention of Pokémon Home compatibility was scrubbed from the games’ eShop listings shortly after their announcement. If that means support has been removed that’s a real shame, as it was a key appeal of replaying the games.

Whatever the case, one thing that is all but guaranteed is that any future Pokémon re-releases, at least for the mainline games, will be handled in the same way. That might’ve been the case anyway, but Nintendo’s only got further incentive now that it knows how many people are willing to put the money down.

So many of the older Pokémon games aren’t readily available anymore and if those theories/rumours of DS support coming to Switch 2 prove true, the first five generations of games could all be sold side-by-side.

This is Nintendo, though, so it wouldn’t be shocking if it handled future re-releases in a weird way, such as bringing back Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire but not the ‘definitive’ Emerald version. After all, this is the same company that made a 3D Super Mario compilation without Super Mario Galaxy 2.

Does this mean other retro Nintendo games will be sold separately from the Switch Online library? No, probably not, given that would undermine the otherwise successful service.

Pokémon is the exception not just because it makes so much money, but because Nintendo doesn’t want people abusing the rewind and save state functions to more easily claim shiny pokémon. This is the same reason why none of the Pokémon games on Switch have cloud save functionality.

That said, Pokémon spin-offs will no doubt continue to be added to the Switch Online library. Next on the docket are GameCube titles Pokémon Colosseum and Pokémon XD: Gale Of Darkness, which are expected to get release dates at Friday’s presentation.

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