Video games have been well and truly usurped as the Pokémon cash cow, with trading cards and merchandise easily raking in billions more than the franchise’s clockwork gaming releases.
This status quo reshuffle has firmly placed Pokémon games like Scarlet and Violet and the approaching Pokémon Legends: Z-A release into a new category: Franchise fluffers. While mainline games and their spinoffs were once the be-all and end-all of the series, they’ve evolved into a simple vehicle to introduce new Pokémon that can then be turned into cards, dolls, stickers, and anything that can be dreamed up for merchandise.
This was made all the more clear after The Pokémon Company shared its earnings through to March 2024, with the eyepopping 2023/24 figures as follows:
- Video games made $10 million
- 11.9 billion cards made and sold for $857 million in revenue
- Licensed merchandise made $10.8 billion globally
The flow for The Pokémon Company is simple: Release new Pokémon games with as many as 100 to 150 new creatures packaged into the ever-expanding PokéDex. Put those fresh Pokémon front and centre through advertising and story gameplay, as well as pivotal arcs in the never-ending series anime (which has been running continuously since 1997), then turn around and slap them on merch and cards. It’s basically a printing press for money at this point; the Pokémon TCG was easily the number one card game in Japan this year.
This system’s no surprise to anyone who’s been supporting the Pokémon franchise in modernity, with fans this week identifying “the sheer amount of revenue from non-video game sales shows why Pokémon has to release new games on a drumbeat like rhythm.”
Not everyone’s so happy about the pipeline, of course, with some fearing how easily the franchise makes money. “They have no incentive to spend more since they make so much already.”
Perhaps the biggest complaints Pokémon fans had after the status quo around gaming became even more apparent was simply how “poor” newer releases have been. Many claimed Game Freak and The Pokémon Company have been phoning in designs, mechanics, and graphics as far back as Let’s Go, Pikachu! and the Sword and Shield dual release. “Everything looks really bad, low FPS… you can see very bad tiled textures.”
One solution could well be “going back to 2D mixed with 3D,” which was a hallmark of later Nintendo 3DS releases like Sun and Moon and Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, though the Pokémon developers have resisted those calls for years.
This doesn’t mean Pokémon‘s video games are going anywhere by any means either. Legends: Z-A is bubbling away at the Game Freak offices and is expected to release next year, while Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket is coming next month (and we already got a hands-on preview with the TCG expansion release just recently).
Elsewhere in the Pokémon universe, Nintendo has finally launched a lawsuit salvo at rival franchise Palworld over “infringement” concerns. This shouldn’t impact Pokémon releases.
