Z-A Only Needs to Sell 200,000 Units to Break Even

Pokemon Legends: Z-A may need to sell only 200,000 units to break even, according to former Nintendo employees. This incredibly low number of sales required to reach profitability is only possible because Pokemon Legends: Z-A reportedly has an extremely low budget.

Released on October 16, Pokemon Legends: Z-A is the latest entry in Nintendo’s popular franchise, following Pokemon Legends: Arceus in the subseries started in 2022. Early reviews of Pokemon Legends: Z-A have been fairly positive, and the title currently stands with an average critic score of 81 on OpenCritic.

Pokemon Legends: Z-A Only Needs 200,000 Sales to Break Even Due to Incredibly Low Budget

Former Nintendo of America employees Krysta Yang and Kit Ellis discussed the recent Pokemon leak on their channel and mentioned an interesting detail regarding Pokemon Legends: Z-A: its budget is around 2 billion yen ($13 million). While these leaked numbers may be outdated and should be taken with a grain of salt, Ellis said they indicate that Pokemon Legends: Z-A would only need to sell around 200,000 units to become profitable, which is “a remarkably low number.” Ellis then criticized Nintendo for not injecting “a bit more money” into the series, as they were guaranteed “cash cows,” but still felt somewhat lackluster in terms of graphics, for example. In any case, it bears noting that the marketing budget, which is generally fairly large for Pokemon games and may be well over $13 million, was not part of these estimates.

How many copies Pokemon Legends: Z-A will manage to sell on day one remains to be seen. However, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet was a big hit, selling around 27 million copies, so it’s pretty much guaranteed that the latest entry in the franchise will sell more than 200,000 units with ease. Scarlet and Violet were heavily criticized for their graphics and performance when the games were released, indicating that Pokemon fans would love to see Nintendo and Game Freak invest more money to add polish to future titles.

It remains to be seen how Nintendo will move forward regarding the budgets of its Pokemon games, though. As part of the recent leak, information about Gen 10 Pokemon games surfaced. The next mainline entries in the franchise will allegedly be called Pokemon Wind and Wave, and will be based on a region inspired by Indonesia and Southeast Asia. One of the most distinguishing features planned for the games is “infinite islands,” which will be procedurally generated. However, not many details about how they will work have been leaked, and gamers still don’t know much about the game’s budget, either.