Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are on track to be released on 19th November and, for those who collect the physical copies of the game, some pricing should be taken into account.

The official Nintendo distributor in South Africa, Core, has opened pre-orders on its official site with the two single games (here and here) both selling for R1 199, and the Dual Pack for R2 199.

This means that the Dual Pack – which contains two physical cartridges, one for each game – is R199 less expensive compared to buying the two games individually.

For anyone outside of the Pokémon fandom this may seem like a terrible value proposition, even with the small saving, made even worse by the fact that these two games are almost identical with tiny differences between them.

And while those people may be right, there’s a lot of collectors out there who have a collection of physical Pokémon games going back to the originals on the Game Boy, and this kind of deal is par for the course.

On top of that anyone who has looked at the prices of older physical Pokémon games will know that these cartridges usually keep their value and become more expensive after a few years. We aren’t saying you should go out and invest in Pokémon games with your life savings, only that the purchase isn’t as ridiculous as it may sound on paper.

Core isn’t the only ones who have opened up pre-orders for these games and the Dual Pack recently. Local retailers like Nexus, BT Games, and Raru all have pre-orders open already. Each has slightly different pricing and Raru currently has a discount code for pre-orders, so click around before making the purchase.

While we’d usually warn against pre-ordering and suggest waiting for reviews, the Pokémon fandom is so strong we’re sure many are rushing to buy regardless.

All we can say is that Sword and Shield remains a disappointment and we don’t have the highest hopes for Brilliant Diamond, Shining Pearl or Legends: Arceus.