Following the purported Pokemon megaleak, two former Nintendo marketing leads estimate that Pokemon Legends: Z-A only needs to sell about 200,000 copies to make back its development budget.
Alleged confidential information straight from The Pokemon Company has been doing the rounds this week - though it all reportedly stems from last year's hack - with unverified documents about Generation 10 and future plans flooding the internet. Part of the supposedly leaked information relates to Legends: Z-A's budget, which is reportedly 2 billion yen, or around $13 million.
Of course, those numbers might be outdated or outright wrong, but Nintendo of America's former marketing leads, Krysta Yang and Kit Ellis, discussed them all the same in a recent podcast.
According to Ellis, the game would only need to sell 200k to break even with a production budget of $13 million. (The marketing budget, which for this series is usually "a significant amount of money," isn't factored in.) "I'm pretty confident that Pokemon Legends Z-A is going to eek past 200,000 units sold, so it's just a remarkably low number," he said.
For context, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet sold a whopping 27 million copies together. With that in mind, Ellis questioned why all involved parties aren't investing more into the games.
"Why have these Pokemon games felt a little lacklustre in certain departments in terms of graphics, in terms of polish? It does make you wonder, like, yeah, maybe they [The Pokemon Company] should inject a bit more money into these things that are guaranteed cash cows [and] profit drivers. You have a lot of hedge room, you don't need to worry about profitability like some of these big AAA games that we're seeing now."
"I don’t get this at all," Yang added. "I truly don't understand the strategy that some business person over there came up with because, you got a sure thing…it's sold time and time again. It's never had an issue with sales, so why not invest a little bit more?... Just so you don't have crappy trees and windows," she said, before likening the unconfirmed budgets to a stingy rich person.
In the meantime, check out our Pokemon Legends: Z-A review or see how to find all Mega Stones in Pokemon Legends: Z-A.
