Pokemon Sun/Moon Shatter Nintendo's Record for Fastest-Selling Game in the Americas

There was initially some confusion about the degree to which Nintendo was benefiting from Pokemon Go; in reality, it was only receiving a small part of the revenue from the hit game. But the lingering effects of Go are still being felt, as evidenced by the strong performance of recently released 3DS games Pokemon Sun and Moon.

Noting that they were the most-preordered games in its history, Nintendo of America announced today that Sun and Moon are now the fastest-selling games it's ever launched in the Americas. In under two weeks, sales have already eclipsed 3.7 million units. That's an 85 percent increase as compared with the previous record holders, Pokemon X and Y, over a similar period of time after launch in 2013.

Nintendo doesn't actually attribute this success to Pokemon Go. That game's name is not mentioned even once in today's press release, though it seems hard to deny that some correlation exists. Go's popularity hit tremendous heights over the summer, briefly boosting Nintendo's market cap.

Since Go's release, 3DS sales have been up in the United States. It was actually the top-selling system overall during July, and subsequent months have seen year-over-year sales increases.

Also mentioned in the press release is the fact that "Pokemon-related software" sales have surpassed 280 million units worldwide since 1996, when Pokemon Red and Blue were released.

For the time being, Pokemon X and Y remain the best-selling 3DS games ever, with 15.64 million units sold as of September 30. That may not remain the case for long, with Sun and Moon also becoming Nintendo's fast-selling game ever in the UK. It also sold almost 2 million copies in Japan in its first three days.

There was some indication that Sun and Moon would be a big hit. Its demo broke Nintendo records when it was released in October. And the company indicated it would ship significantly more copies of Sun and Moon at launch than it did X and Y, which is particularly notable considering the increasing trend toward digital sales.

For more, check out GameSpot's Sun and Moon review.