I think Pokémon is better compared to Star Wars than MTG. Is Star Wars going away anytime in the future?
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I agree. I’ve run the numbers and Pokemon will be popular among kids for exactly 13.278 more years.
And Disney princess stories will fade in popularity around then too. After all, how many stories can Disney make about princesses who face adversity before prevailing and finding their love?
…but seriously, we just don’t know how many more generations Pokemon will remain popular. All we can say right now is that almost 25 years in (and almost 22 years since it was introduced to the West) Pokemon remains very popular among today’s children, which is a promising sign for its long-term future. Even if this were the last generation of kids to grow up liking Pokemon, there will already be an enormous population of people that has nostalgic memories of Pokemon.
But yeah, it’s just not possible to say how long Pokemon will continue to make its mark on future generations. Time will tell. But my general feeling is that Pokemon is so entrenched in the culture and dynamic enough that it will continue to adapt to the times and continue to draw children in the future.
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Pokemon does a good job remaining relevant with kids which is great and eventually some of those kids will become adults who want to relive their childhood and collect. Card prices continue to rise and has proven so far to be a great investment while also being a fun hobby collecting. Higher prices will get more attention and attract more collectors/investors. I always like comparing it to other collectibles like art, comics, and sports cards which have all done very well over time.
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Sales completely disagree with your point.
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Interesting perspective! I should add that I barely had WOTC cards myself despite growing up in the 90s. I think my parents didn’t want to buy me them, but when YuGiOh came around I had a lot of those. I still want WOTC more than anything because I long for the 90s nostalgia and the cards I could never have.
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I am aware of this. And they will keep reprinting everything to keep all cards available for their from-design-till-tournament controlled game meta. Alongside with this the extra product, like Mystic Collection, XY boxes, Tins are stacked till the heavens in toy stores and LGS’s over here because they just cannot get rid of it.
Sword and Shield cards might look nice, but so many of the original Sun and Moon mechanics just have been reprinted. Making competition stale. There is another Zoroark GX like effect. Gardevoir is back with almost an 1:1 copy and with the continuously availability of the product, none will really become the hidden treasure in a decade from now.
They really have to reinvent the TCG to have more mechanics (EX/GX/VMax basically is all the same), revamp Standard and Expanded formats to not go into the same 2-3 “meta deck” loop. Also Nintendo just has to get off their ass and produce a Pokémon game that is wanted so much for so many years; an open-world game where you can catch every single one of the pocket monsters. Instead of making a new 100 ones and pack them in a closed game world every 4 years.
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@genosha, Modern doesn’t need to be rare. Sure in the short term for serious collectors it can feel stale. More importantly Modern plays a role; getting people into pokemon. There are so many collectors who are here because of “saturated print”. Evolutions alone brought in a ton of people. Shining Legends as well. This only happens because cards are on shelves nationwide.
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Oh. It doesn’t have to be rare… but every set these days is designed with an archetype in mind and only those are viable in tournament play. Yet it can be played with minimal investment, because you don’t need a $20 SR to roll the deck, just get the $4-6 normal print and flash out from there. Making 95% of each set bulk. Sleeper cards never get discovered. I have not seen any Expanded deck for years now that’s not just a Standard deck with the endless stream of Battle Compressors, VS Seekers and N’s. And in my opinion, and I’ve been saying this for a few years now on here, they have to really switch the game around to make sure the people actually keep playing.
From my old League play group, only 4 of the original 52 are left playing Pokemon. The rest switched to YGO, MTG or KeyForge because they were tired of the same 4-6 decks rotating through every X weeks.
I don’t think Pokemon is in the market of MTG or YGO. I do not believe because it’s a TCG means the gameplay is their focus. Pokemon is for kids… the easy accessibility makes it easy for parents to get their kids into it which continually grows the market. Personally, I see Pokemon in the DISNEY market more than the MTG category. Just my opinion. 
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I totally agree
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I think it will be strong long-term. The cornerstone to the Pokemon franchise is basically being able to introduce kids to the characters. That most likely occurs from television, movies and video games to a certain extent. So this is what I am looking at:
Season 23 of the television series (Pokemon Journeys) will be on Netflix. Netflix currently has 180 million subscribers and there are 120 million US households. So I would assume the vast majority of US households have Netflix.
The Pokemon movies are still popular with kids.
The pokemon video games are popular (pokemon go etc.) with kids.
The most popular pokemon youtubers focus their content towards kids. That shows you that there is a large audience of kids specifically interested in pokemon TCG.
So overall it looks like the franchise is very strong.
If you compare that to magic, I don’t see the same thing happening. I don’t see 14-18 year olds playing magic. Seems like most people playing are 30-40 years old. So I see pokemon being strong long-term compared to magic. The wildcare for pokemon TCG is to see if the younger generation will want physical products when you have the game. I don’t see the online TCG game as being a threat overall but time will tell. Another wildcard is if WOTC era cards will appreciate as they did in the past. When the youngsters of today grow up…will they want to buy WOTC era cards or cards that they were familiar with opening as a child. Maybe they will covet the hidden fates zard compared to the base 1st edition zard. I remember when I came back into the hobby, the items I went after were the items I remember being the “holy grail” items that I couldn’t get as a child. I remember seeing these cards in the Nintento Power magazine and thinking how cool they would be to have.
You would be hard pressed to find a single person on the elite hardcore collectors forum that would say that Pokémon is going to fail.
For me, so long as Pokémon as a franchise remains relevant in every age, it will never die. We’re not even at the peak of nostalgia for these things. Wait until the kids who were 5/6 when the cards/game/show first came out turn 40/50. Then it will truly be the top for our era. After that, who knows.
Even if Pokemon goes under tomorrow, these cards will still hold value. It’s the nostalgia that fuels it, not the cards.
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What does that mean?
I presume he is talking about the selection bias inherent to asking about the future prospects of the Pokemon franchise to a board comprised of people really into Pokemon such as this.
I have mixed feelings personally on where Pokemon may be in 10, 20, 50 years. I really just have no idea as it’s already far outpaced anything I could have imagined today. Itll always have a special place in my heart, but I dont plan to die with my collection like it seems some here do. Aside from my childhood collection and maybe a few key favorites that is. That’s not to say I’m in it just for the money, I just believe at some point the market will value most more than I do as I age and priorities change even more than they have already.
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I remember people complaining about sets 10 years ago saying if they don’t change pokemon is going to die, cards are all the same, nobody will want to play the game etc. My nephew and younger cousin love the new cards, I can buy them a pack and no matter what they pull they love it.
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I remember when base set 2 was released and everyone was declaring it was the end of the hobby and how base set 2 was going to be worthless. Now I am looking at the booster boxes going for 4k each all day long on ebay…
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Perhaps something that many of us on this card-collecting forum often forget: the video games are the main draw of the Pokemon franchise. They are the keystone–their popularity forms the base that all other shoots of the franchise branch from (TV series, TCG, merchandise, etc.). Without them, everything would fall apart.
The reason why Pokemon’s popularity skyrocketed in the very beginning was because of the games. Pokemon Red/Blue obviously initiated the Pokemon concept, and at the time they were released they were like nothing the world had ever seen. You could not find an RPG experience on handheld that matched it in sheer scale, and the concept was (and is) unparalleled in its ingenuity and universal appeal. Red/Blue blew away the competition. And thus, Pokemon gained a near-monopoly on the “media” portion of many kids’ minds for years.
The new games, steadily over the years, have not been able to recapture this. I think Ruby/Sapphire - X/Y were still great games, but progressively each one stooped down closer to the “meeting the competition” marker. They did not revolutionize as much as they could have, they did not expand the concept as much as they could have, they did not reach the scale that they could have, and they did not reach the graphical potential that they could have. Sun/Moon and especially Sword/Shield showed a steeper decline, dipping below the point of the competition and entering the realm of sub-par and generic and small and uninspired. Compare modern RPGs to Sword/Shield and the latter are a laughingstock in the aspects of story, scale, gameplay/depth, and graphics. Sure the sales are great, but just because something sells well doesn’t mean it has staying power. Furby was released at the same time as Red/Blue and was its main children’s product competition in 1998. Today, no kid under 20 knows what a Furby is, and those of us old enough to drink couldn’t care less about Furby. Pokemon had the staying power because it was quality product. Part of its quality being the timeless, universal, and creative concept (which, in my mind, is better than any other media franchise has ever conceived–Star Wars, Harry Potter, Spongebob, Mario, you name it), and the other part being its sheer superiority over all other competition.
Modern Pokemon lacks that. Sword/Shield, while some Pokemon fans may find them fun, are subpar games in this era. Breath of the Wild, Mario Odyssey, Minecraft, Super Smash Bros., and many others are leagues ahead of modern Pokemon games in their quality, and will be remembered as such for years to come. For the children of today starting out with Sun/Moon or Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee or Sword/Shield, they may be fun for now, but they won’t capture and engage them like the Pokemon games of yore. When little Billy grows up, his best gameplay experiences will have been Fortnite and Minecraft. Pokemon will be just another game. It won’t have the nostalgia. It won’t have that near monopoly-like effect on the mind. Modern Pokemon isn’t the “phenomenon” that it was 20+ years ago. A phenomenon doesn’t just have popularity and sales–it has quality which ensures long-term popularity and sales.
If Pokemon Sword/Shield released as they did last year BUT without any of the history of the franchise–like, if they were literally the first games of the entire series–would they have generated the same popularity for the franchise that Red/Blue generated in 20+ years time? I think almost everyone would agree that they wouldn’t. Because relative to everything else that’s out there today, Sword/Shield aren’t special. The reason why Sword/Shield still sold well is because they are riding on the coattails of the franchise’s history.
There are MANY reasons to be excited for the future of Pokemon card collecting–people with nostalgia for the cards are only going to get higher salaries and bigger bank accounts with time, and if they’ve stuck around for 20 years they’ll still be around in 40. However, I think what I’ve been talking about in this post is the #1 concern/reason to be cautious about the future of this hobby: the children of today will not love it as much as we have loved and will continue to love it.
As an allegorical example: Babe Ruth was far and away the best player of his era. He is the most famous figure in baseball’s past. Now take George Hendrick. Who’s that? I dunno lol. I just tried googling to find an outfielder from the somewhat recent past who had some decent numbers. The game of baseball changed dramatically over 50 years as the athletic talent accelerated. George Hendrick would have been even better than Babe Ruth if he was time-traveled back 50 years. And if you took beer-chugging, hot dog-downing Babe Ruth and threw him into the '70/80s, he would probably struggle to even make a major league team. And yet, no one today cares about George Hendrick. But we revere Babe Ruth like a god of the sport. And if you wanna talk prices, Babe Ruth baseball cards sell like 1st Edition Base Set Charizards. George Hendrick cards sell like Weedles.
That’s past and present Pokemon in a nutshell. If Product A is the best product in the world in 1999, and Product B is better than Product A but it is made in 2019 and is inferior to most other products, no one is going to remember Product B 20 years down the line. But they’ll never forget Product A.
The main series’ games are the cornerstone of the franchise, and their failure will lead to the decay of other aspects of the franchise as well. The children who grow up playing Pokemon today will not love it and forever cherish it as we have. People like Scott and Gary and most of us on the forum today will always be here and will be collecting this colorful cardboard until we’re old and gray. But the generation behind us likely won’t feel the same.
The most reasonable, logical estimation I can conceive in this moment in time is that Pokemon will still have a huge faction of older mega fans for many decades to come…but unless the franchise begins to change course in its quality (and there is, of course, still plenty of time to do that!), I don’t think the current generation of kids will love it like we have. And this will surely stunt the future of the cards and the franchise as a whole.
Sales are temporary. Quality is forever.
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Yeah, I agree with pretty much everything. It’s difficult to be able to understand both sides and come out with a stance. However, I suppose, like I said initially, only time will tell.
mtajaj32 brings up a lot of points about the game and connection to the bandwitdth of the current generation. I worked in a public school before moving to Japan and Pokemon was still just as massive in the kids desires list. This was pre-Sword/Shield. You could tell which kids would be future big time collectors, but almost everyone had cards and was looking to trade, at least for the boys. That being said, WAY more kids talked about Fortnite. However, since fortnite doesn’t have the pedigree of Pokemon, that game is likely to be a fad even though it had record breaking sales and players. Plus it’s just a shooter, those are a dime a dozen. Pokemon is a relatively unique idea that is nearly monopolized by Pokemon. Anyone trying to enter the market has to execute flawlessly or else they will be demolished by the behemoth that is Pokemon. Digimon kind of tried and look what happened there. Not sure how something like yokai watch has been doing, but I can’t imagine it lasted much longer than it’s original hype.
I do agree that the games recently have been lackluster, but I feel that even though the games are mediocre, the other mediums have ways of attracting customers to market as well. The TV show is always formulaic, yet I watched the absolute crap out of it as a kid. Went back to watch it now and was like “oh…How did I enjoy Team Rocket’s side show in every episode, it’s so predictable.” Yet I continued to eat that crap up and beg my parents for cards, and throw a tantrum when they wouldn’t buy me Pokemon Ruby even though I had Pokemon Sapphire already.
And yeah, we may be biased, but we have the ability to look objectively at the idea at hand and rationalize. That’s why I like a solid educational discussion! Thanks everyone who has participated so far!
Guaranteed it will keep its popularity. I believe even the Pokemon Sword and Shield games sold extremely well if I am not mistaken. When it comes down to it adults are not their target audience, kids are, and the formula appears to work very well with kids even today in the days of more multiplayer style gaming such as fortnite as competition etc.
My partner is also a school teacher in Australia and says that Pokemon/Yugioh cards are still a big thing on the playground. Simple.
Collecting wise, for me personally nostalgia of Base Set/Games brought me into the hobby, but it was merely a gateway into the obsession of collecting it in its entirety. I didn’t even know of any of the Pokemon sets past Base Set 2 until probably 2017 yet I still love and am obsessed with collecting Neos and Ex era etc. Kids in the future may be brought into the collecting game by the ‘nostalgia’ of Sun and Moon or Black and White etc, but a lot of them once drawn in will then still see the appeal of the WOTC/Ex era and its rarity and pricing kept up by us older collectors that will still be collecting/buying/selling in the next 15 years (you can be damn sure I will).
Also, I am not into sports or comic collecting but I can only imagine it is not uncommon for people who weren’t even alive in the 60s to still see the appeal of collecting certain rare cards/comics from that era pre-dating their birth.
I’ll still probably be buying lol