Pokemon X and Y launched globally two weeks back on October 12, 2013 for the Nintendo 3DS. As part of the game’s marketing promotions, Nintendo officially sponsored events that were held in Japan and some countries in the west.
The company, however, does not have an official foothold anywhere in Southeast Asia. However, that’s not a reason to not celebrate, as fans in the region took it upon themselves to organize meetups to be part of the worldwide release of Pokemon X and Y.
Games in Asia covered the launch event at Funan Digitalife Mall in Singapore. According to the website, fans have gathered in the mall’s 5th floor as early as 9:15am in the morning. Maxsoft, the organizer of the event, gave commemorative stickers to attendees. It later hosted a speed run tournament later in the evening.
Elsewhere, retailer stores had their own way of participating in the launch. One of these retailers, Gamescore, baked cookies which they gave to customers collecting their pre-ordered copies of the games.
Maxsoft is Nintendo’s official distributor in the region, which is why we can still regard the Singapore event as an “official” one. Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, unofficial Nintendo and Pokemon fanclubs organized their own meetups to celebrate the launch.
In Manila, members of PKMN-ph, a Pokemon fan group in the country, organized one at SM Megamall’s Cyberzone area. The actual meetup happened at 1pm in front of Datablitz, a video game retailer store in the country. Fans were able to share friend codes with each other and participated in the Pokemon Black and White Send-Off Tournament. One of the photos of the event (the one above) got tweeted and retweeted by Junichi Masuda, the director of the latest Pokemon games:
Wow! RT @arajakevin: #PokemonTeamPhilippines @Junichi_Masuda @Pokemon #PokemonXY #ItsMoreFUNinthePhilippines pic.twitter.com/AaBoRNNPXJ
— ????@GAME FREAK inc. (@Junichi_Masuda) October 13, 2013
In Malaysia, members of the StreetPass Malaysia team also had their own fan gathering at Wendy’s, Berjaya Time Square in Kuala Lumpur. It was the team’s biggest Streetpass event in the country so far. Support came from Leet Gamers Asia and Digimon & Tamagotchi Memory Land Station in the form of prize sponsors.
Kyo’s Mini Game Mart was responsible for distributing Pokemon X and Y during the launch party. They will also be having a mini event for the launch of the upcoming Legend of Zelda game for the Nintendo 3DS. Here’s the group shot from the Malaysia gathering:
A Streepass event, organized by the Singapore Nintendo 3DS Community, Team Robo, and Nintendo 3DS Singapore, also happened in the island side by side the official launch event at Funan. Even those who did not buy their games at Funan were able to join.
We also heard that by the second official day of release, end-of-day Sunday, the game had sold 4 million copies, making the game title one of the fastest selling Pokémon game so far. Compared to past games in the series, it’s doing very well: initial sales are up 70 percent over Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 sales.
The top-selling Pokémon games are Diamond and Pearl, which moved 17 million units. The others are loosely in that ballpark, minus a few million; even the remakes sold 12 million units. So that means Pokémon X and Y sales have, in two days, already managed about a quarter of the lifetime sales of the top-selling Pokémon games ever.
Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo, commented on the high-performing Pokémon X and Y sales in a press statement:
The early response to Pokemon X and Pokemon Y not only reaffirms the ongoing passion of Pokemon fans, but also indicates that an entirely new generation of gamers are eager to experience the franchise for themselves.
This is the first time Pokemon games were released simultaneously around the world. With or without Nintendo’s support, fans will find a way to celebrate their favourite game titles. Perhaps Nintendo will start focusing on this region when they finally notice the passion of gamers here, and hopefully they will set a foothold here in the near future.
Photo credits: StreetPass Malaysia, Pkmn-PH, Games in Asia. All links to the credits are at this post’s main content.
