Pikmin 3 Deluxe sales grow to series' best in Japan

Pikmin 3 Deluxe has finally become the series' best-selling game in Japan, in terms of physical copies sold.

Nintendo's garden strategy threequel has now shifted 513k boxed copies, enough to beat the original GameCube Pikmin's lifetime sales. It has also more than doubled Pikmin 3's original sales total from back when it first launched on Wii U.

That's according to Japanese sales data from Famitsu (thanks, Gematsu) which does not count eShop downloads.

Sure, half a million copies sold does not rival Mario and Zelda's numbers. But it's still not bad for a re-release of a third game after many years of the franchise remaining dormant.

Well enough, perhaps, that Nintendo may consider keeping the series going? Plans for a Pikmin 4 have existed for a while - but you probably know about all that.

Alas, here in the UK, it seems Pikmin 3 Deluxe fared less well. It stuck around in the UK top 40 physical games chart for only a couple of weeks after its release last year, and is nowhere to be found now even in the current Switch-specific game top 20. While other Nintendo games have become evergreen sellers, it seems Pikmin 3 has not joined that category here.

"Like its many buried riches, Nintendo's Pikmin series remains a treasure ready to be rediscovered," I wrote in Eurogamer's Pikmin 3 Deluxe review last year. "Pikmin 3 is well worth dusting off, as we wait for the series to properly end its garden leave."