Nintendo has celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Pokémon franchise with the biggest game launch in the franchise’s history.

Pokémon Legends: Arceus has already outsold any previous Pokémon titles that were released with just one version available.

According to GfK Entertainment data, Arceus accounted for nearly half of all physical, boxed games copies in the last week of January, beating Playstation’s well-received new title Uncharted: The Legacy of Thieves Collection, and pushing FIFA 22 into third place.

The official anniversary of the franchise was 2021, when Nintendo announced the title in conjunction with the Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl games, also released for the 25-year milestone. However, they waited until 2022 to release Arceus.

Nintendo games are rarely reduced in price on their online store, drawing in more customers to their physical copies.

Since the franchise’s inception in 1996, 905 species of Pokémon have been created, and the games have sold more than 380 million copies worldwide.

Over 34 billion trading cards have been sold to date – and even attracted criticism from PETA in 2012, for “supporting cruelty to animals”.

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Arceus has been widely well-received, with 89% of Google users giving it positive reviews, averaging 4.4 out of 5 stars.

It is a new take on the traditional game structure, breaking away from the turn-based role-play game paradigm.

It is considered to be more difficult than previous iterations, providing more of a challenge for adult players who felt older games in the series were too easy.

More players than ever joined the Nintendo family last year, with the Switch outselling every other console on the market combined – 5.3 million units in 2021, dwarfing Sony’s PlayStation 5 with 942,798 units in second place.

Global supply chain issues have meant major disruption in production of many consoles, forcing Sony to continue producing Playstation 4s this year, when they had hoped to transition to their newer model.