According to Nintendo's recent report of its earnings for fiscal year 2017 ending on March 31, the company's 2DS and 3DS role-playing games of Pokemon Sun and Moon have shipped 15.44 million units worldwide. As pointed out by Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima, not only are the aforementioned titles bona fide hits in their own right, but also they helped accelerate sales for 3DS hardware and software overall as well.
When looking at Nintendo's recent earnings report, sell-through of Nintendo 3DS systems surpassed the previous year's total, even though the handheld has been on the market for about seven years at this point. For fiscal year 2017, the Big N reported 7.27 million 3DS systems had shipped, which is up approximately 500,000 units year-over-year, thanks in no small part to Game Freak's Pokemon Sun and Moon.
Interestingly enough, Kimishima explained that the popularity of Pokemon Sun and Moon was bolstered by Niantic's Pokemon GO, as the mobile title's "upsurge in popularity" helped increase awareness of the Nintendo 2DS and 3DS titles. Although Pokemon GO's daily user base has dropped by 80%, it seems as if the augmented reality release has managed to help sustain interest in the brand overall, thus further accelerating the sales for Sun and Moon.
Shortly after Pokemon Sun and Moon's release last year, financial data revealed that the 2DS and 3DS games had already become blockbusters, so the news of titles moving even more units should really come as no surprise. As a matter of fact, several months ago, the releases had already been touted as the best selling games of 2016 for Amazon.
With critics and fans alike having applauded the developers' decision to add the games' Alolan Pokemon forms, implement more in-depth exploration, and refine the franchise's battle system with Z-Moves, Game Freak's gambles to shake up the series' original formula with Pokemon Sun and Moon somewhat definitely seems to have paid off. So, taking all of this into consideration, it's really no wonder why Pokemon Sun and Moon have managed to ship such a huge amount of copies since their release.
Pokemon Sun and Moon are available now for Nintendo 2DS and 3DS.
Source: Nintendo 1, 2