>>46247793compared to older games
- SWSH was the first mainline game on a console as successful as the Switch (doubt I need to say this, but for various reasons it's VERY arguable whether LGPE counts here or not)
- having come after SM, SWSH had chinese support, and as little as the chinese fanbase may be in proportion, China is still huge, so a small part of the chinese population is still pretty significant
- SWSH was the first to have DLC to keep it hyped for a year, meaning more players were drawn into playing the game, including those who were waiting for a third version to come out
- lastly, sales don't show a game's quality at all, as many people bought the game very early when, even counting the awful advertisement, there was still no way to be so sure if the game was going to be bad or not: if anything, this might heavily impact the sales of the next mainline game
so in conclusion, 20 million sales didn't come from the game's good quality, but rather by a series of circumstances, and I believe if the game was actually good it would've sold even more copies
