This is a thought I had the other day, with the amount of failed franchises, failed TCGs, failed videogames, and generally, brands or creative works that have their limited spotlight and then fade into obscurity forever. Also given that we are in the context of a capitalist world where profit is ultimately the goal, many companies or franchises end up “squeezing their fanbase” a bit too hard and causing backlash/disinterest.
While I’m sure we can find examples of Pokemon doing this, the reality is that its appeal is greater than ever, judged by revenue (games, cards, merch), number of competitive events/players, and the overall secondary markets that have sprouted.
So the question is then, what did Pokemon do or didn’t do that helped them earn and keep this trust with the consumers?
Ideas/explanations I had were:
its origin in Japan and the cultural context of how they honor tradition,
the fact it became a global phenomenon (with its corresponding weight in revenue) may have forced management to be more careful with changes/experiments in direction,
The Pokémon Company is jointly owned by Nintendo, Game Freak and Creatures, which are three parties who have to agree before anything ships. That friction maybe a natural brake against risky behaviour.
long running management and institutional memory (Ishihara running TPC isnce 1998) instead of western franchises where creative leadership churns every 3–5 years and every new head wants to leave a mark on it
Pokémon not depending necessarily on one character or species but on the “roster” itself, so difficult to betray and cause a fan revolt because it’s hard to retcon something without a sacred timeline
following up from above, each new game is a fresh entry designed for a 9yo, meaning they re-recruit the base each generation instead of aging with it, and as a consequence, can serve two audiences that largely conflict: kids with new product, adults with nostalgia and collectibles, whereas most IPs can only really serve one
risk is quarantined into spin-offs, such as Legends, Snap, Mystery Dungeon, Unite, Sleep , etc. So a flop never contaminates the flagship idea
core experience has never been rented to consumers. There is no subscription, no battle pass, and no seasonal FOMO calendar on mainline. The F2P monetization is fenced off into GO/Pocket/Unite alone.
english backs haven’t changed since 1999, and japanese ones since 2001, and the overall card size and shape remains the same, meaning they can be stored similarly with newer ones, sleeved the same, and shuffled the same (though you cannot use them competitively)
when scalping exploded, the response was just “print more” to ensure product remained available to target audience, the actual kids, while other companies might have preferred to take that extra margin
Pokémon never tried to own or crack down on the informational layer (bulbapedia, smogon, damage calcs, fan-run locals, etc)
secondary market is tolerated rather than fought (although this might be slowly changing) which might help them get free advertising ultimately
25+ years of near-continuous weekly anime in dozens of countries, free at point of use, effectively functioning as a permanent ad
What do you think, whether any of this is actually repeatable, or whether we’re reverse-engineering a strategy out of a survivorship-bias story. What would a franchise launching in 2026 even be able to copy?
I think the tri ownership has helped pokemon grow in multiple areas. For cards specifically, tpc has perfected the model of giving people a taste of what they want, but never the full thing. Id also argue they follow their own path and arent too concerned with other tcgs. No one can compete
I think the first 2-4 generations of games hitting in the way they did in that era laid a foundation that is unlikely to ever be broken, in the same way that the first Star Wars films have done for everything that followed.
Red and Blue were the perfect games at the perfect time. Even their imperfections were perfect, in that they hit right when the internet was really taking off and they further fueled the fire. So the fact that among the nonsense rumors of PokeGods, evolving Dragonite into Yoshi, and getting to the grass outside of route 1 to catch the other starters there really was just a glitchy blob you could find by surfing who would give you unlimited items, and there really was a secret hidden Pokemon named Mew who could learn every move in the entire game.
Then Gen 2 hits and everything is bigger, better, more polished, new mechanics introduced, and new types. The absolute cherry on top being after the Elite 4 and the natural conclusion of the first game, surprise you get to go back to the old region, beat all the updated gym leaders, and then finish with a fight against the player character from the first game. It’s actually insane how incredible GSC is as a follow up to the RBY era.
Gens 3 and 4 didn’t hit as hard, but the games launched on new hardware, looked great, and the Pokemon designs and innovation were still really strong.
I think one thing other franchises could learn is how not over the top Pokemon went with their evolution lines. Charmander just evolves into a bigger redder lizard, who then evolves into a bigger lizard with wings, he’s not turning into some Mega Rayquaza-esque dragon. If you compare that to something like Digimon at the time where Augumon evolves into a huge dinosaur, then a metal dinosaur with wings, then an armored humanoid, it’s just a bit much. Even with something like Palworld now I find with a lot of the designs they are trying very hard to be very cute or cool instead of just being what they are. You’re just not going to see something like Fearow in anything else.
My personal opinion is that everything got very stale and they don’t do as much as they could with the franchise. People seem to forget (in the face of this insane modern hype) that Pokémon went through a long while of “quiet years” before Pokémon GO came out (bringing world peace with it for one blissful summer.)
I think the games are tried and true, fun creature collecting, but don’t try anything new, and watching the old show (nostalgia notwithstanding) is like pulling teeth.
Compare the original series to Pokémon Adventures show and I feel like it exemplifies what I mean. That was a good show.
I feel like what Pokémon does like no other is marketing and merchandise, but I personally believe the actual substance of most of the media is extremely lax for innovation. Each game might do something “new” from the last, and there is merit to knowing what you get each time, but the games they could make leave a lot to be desired. It’s nice to see something like Pokopia do well and this is promising to me.
At the very least, they are moving forward with bringing some variety to the TCG with the types of cards they bring out, and I thing things like full-arts was a step in the right direction, and you can trace that willingness all the way back to reverse holos and the LC holos. (Which was controversial at the time.)
In short, I feel like a franchise going on for 30 years HAS to try something new and it’s been a long time coming, nice to see some of it creeping in, and personally long overdue. I think it’s down to marketing, merchandise, branding, character design that it survived the lull. But mostly?
Due to the loyal fans created in the first wave of Pokémania that stayed, as so many fell away from it.
It is incredible how much worthless garbage TPC has been able to sell to their consumers since pretty much day 1 and how that garbage has no blunting effect whatsoever on the brand, but rather feeds into it. You’d spend your last pocket money on trinkets of profoundly poor quality because you couldn’t find cards in the store on that particular saturday, and the frustration would not be with your own slavish devotion but with not getting your card fix. You’d happily spend $40 on a 40-hour-to-beat comically bad side game to get a mystery gift mythic that should’ve already been available in the real game. Any bubbling frustrations entirely pacified by this golden opportunity to get the mystery gift blob of pixels.
Cultivating this slavish devotion and profiting from it (like @johto says, marketing and merchandising like no other) is what they do best. The not-so-secret tool of child gambling playing a crucial role in that.
Pokémon sells the idea of an idyllic world of having a permanent friend creature.
There is nothing more appealing to a child.
It’s almost just as appealing to adults.
Imagine a companion you pick at the age of 10 that stays with you? Short of old age, although with some exceptions, they don’t really die. They’re autonomous, intelligent, and they can work alongside you too.
Even the first partner choice, the encounter, the catch… Is a gamble.
The franchise hit the cultural zeitgeist at the right time and it’s impossible to repeat as everything, even our shared reality, continues to fracture. There’ll never be another time or another period like it for something else to replicate.
Having said that, conceptually too it was very strong. Catching relatable looking creatures that mostly grew bigger. And of course, the game itself was great otherwise it would’ve never taken off in the first place.
So with those foundations, and perhaps as you mentioned, the slightly more conservative approach out of Japan, it has been able to chug along after. Even the Pokemon Go boom came at the right time, with mobile phones and games being long established for widespread reach combined with nostalgia of the generation that grew up with it.
And despite all the criticism the games have been receiving since Gen 8, both of them still sold the most since Gen 1 - and both had the benefit of wide Switch adoption and the post-Go boom. Coincidentally the cards have taken off in that same time period and driven a lot of popularity too to balance the mid game reception.
Too early to tell if Wind & Waves will be any good, but the signs are promising - and if it happens to be great, then Pokemon/Game Freak/Nintendo will be once again blessed with the timing of everything - that however long it took them to evolve as a company, they still made it through.
(Though personally I really enjoyed SV, and given many different generations of kids have grown up with successive generations, the formula is clearly pretty evergreen.)
what you said really touched upon another idea I had weeks ago regarding the philosophy behind the pokemon games and concept, but probably better to leave it to another thread.
in short, the philosophy of Pokémon’s appeal isn’t only through permanent friendship, but that we actualize our own potential through interdependent growth with that monster friend, by facing challenges together. It’s known as companionate ethics, where meaning emerges from a shared struggle, and not from a solitary victory.
Yeah & coming from a culture that’s all about “shared struggle” but decrying the individual I’m not surprised there are parallels. The people in Pokémon that “act for themselves” are the villains or the rivals. I think this is also why the “companion” has such deep-rooted appeal especially in Japan with its loneliness epidemic. Best left for another thread, but I’ll be there.
In addition to all that, the games being on a handheld console was another huge factor that led to the perfect storm that was pokemon. This wasnt a game you needed to fight with everyone else in the house for the tv to play. Every kid in the house could have their own game boy and copy of the game and play their own save. You could play and trade with friends without having to take turns with the controller. Being able to take and play the game anywhere was a major part of the experience. If pokemon had released on snes or n64 instead, I doubt it would have ever reached the same popularity it did. Looking back its actually surprising a major franchise grew from a game that was released on a handheld console back then, at a time when game boy basically got watered down versions of Nintendo’s main console games.
As mentioned by previous commenters, the start of the Pokemon franchise was so unbelievably successful and widespread that it set it up for success for generations.
When thinking of any franchise ever there are millions of failed brands and franchises. But it’s obviously not fair to compare Pokemon to those two-bit franchises with the start it had.
If you look at franchises that started with anywhere near the popularity that Pokemon did, it actually seems to be more difficult to fail than succeed. For example, if you look through a list of best-selling games of the 90’s, pretty much every game that wasn’t a sequel itself spawned a franchise still popular to today: Gran Turismo, Tomb Raider, Crash Bandicoot, Resident Evil, Mortal Kombat (this is despite them being having like 25% or less of the sales and inertia that Pokemon Red/Blue/Green had).
Those other franchises aren’t the biggest media franchise in the world though, I would say Pokemon got there thanks to:
A) The aforementioned insane inertia that Pokemania had
B) The fact that it can appeal to pretty much all kinds of kids
C) The fact that it is well positioned to be something where parents pass on their fandom to their kids,
D) The fact that their characters are so diverse they can be applied to so many different media properties, and
E) The consumerism of the franchise and the ‘Gotta catch em all’ mindset. Kids play the games, watch the movies and the shows, so they pester their mum for the Pokemon bed sheets and the Pokemon cereal. As adults, you can get pretty much anything under the sun with Pokemon branding, a dog bed, or a cooler, or a chess set, or a giant inflatable pool float (all things currently on the front page of a quick look at the ‘Home’ section on Pokemon centre). If you have interest in anything else, Pokemon will collaborate with them to prod you harder to buy - Lego, Adidas shoes, collectible skateboard, $10,000 Fendi bag. They’ve mastered selling to everyone.
The strangest thing, is somehow it doesn’t even feel like consumerism to people. I don’t know how they do it, but it’s their greatest success.
I stand on principle on this: Pokémon is still run by the people who originally made it… more or less. Sure a lot has been delegated to others, but the core remains largely the same. This, compared to other franchises (which shall remain nameless for now) which had their original creators removed or otherwise no longer involved, and thus the original spirit is diminished. You don’t have to like the places Pokémon has gone, but at least it’s still tied to their original vision, instead of a promoted outsider’s flawed interpretation of that vision… or, worse, adding their own pet project ideas into it because they can, only to then antagonize their audience for complaining.
-The TCG created a fully unique and standalone way to experience the setting of the Pokemon world. Themed sets that focused on a specific in-universe environments (Sandstorm, Mirage Forest, Holon sets etc) made you feel like you were exploring pieces of the Pokemon world that existed beyond the limits of the games. You didn’t really need a console to become a trainer, you just had to rip a couple of packs
-The TCG and other collectibles capitalized on FOMO in a seemingly incidental way. You *think* you love that pokemon, but do you have all of their chase cards in reverse holofoil? What about the figurines? Even after so many sets and toys have went out of print, the collectability and the thrill of the chase created a strong psychological hold on us fans. Products became treasures, which became lifelong obsessions.
-Unlike Digimon, the Pokemon anime adaptation really captured the vibe of the games and their setting pretty well and primed our little brains for further engagement with the franchise. Digimon Adventure, by contrast, didn’t really care about translating the experience of the original digimon toys/games which led to a split fanbase (between the anime, games, and vpets) and an unstable identity for the series’ entire history.
I like a lot of these points made by you, Johto and others, but I’ll offer a counter to some:
The Pokemon Company and Nintendo have Not always been good stewards. They do NOT simply print more product when demand is skyrocketing. They do NOT target the game’s health first anymore, as they once did. They do Not focus on making a good game now, instead opting for prettier graphics, new ideas, “bigger” feel, but sloppy execution (in large part, but not entirely or even mostly.)
I think it’s important to recognize the failings of TPC and to recognize some of what that has cost them. For example, many collectors no longer engage with current sets. Some have left the hobby entirely. Some feel nintendo is using copyright battles to corner the game genre market, instead of making great games. (I would argue that most of their legal action is completely justified, but that they still are not making great games anymore. The cardgame playerbase is suffering (I see far more kids at magic night lately, and pokemon play has stopped at my LGS), there is little singles product on shelves (my LGS has zero vintage now, a total reversal after 30 years, and only less desirable modern.)
But, it’s not terrible. Amiibo was a terrible debacle, for example, and nintendo presided over that, so maybe they learned a few lessons. Then there’s the MTG Hasbro issues… At least TPC isn’t there.
So, all in all, Pokemon is being handled decently well.
Lucky timing (late 90s was perfect timing to release a show and video game), and 90s kids getting spending money during COVID was also lucky
Good general formula, the base formula of catching animals and putting them against each other in a fantasy world while still around back then wasn’t as big until pokemon started expanding on it and making it popular
Several installments in different categories (gaming, card games, collecting, anime/kids show, toys, and most importantly burger king)
Tdlr, luck, timing, good formulas, and diversification of their products.
Look at Konami. Despite being Japanese, Konami didn’t really protect their brand.
Difference between the two is that Konami continuously dips their greedy toes into the aftermarket, releasing “limited” X /1000/3000/5000/10000/etc promos for hundreds (even thousands!) of dollars at msrp. You never see pokemon doing this.
Only one factor of many (toxic meta, nothing outside of tcg, no new playerbase, no showers) that makes Pokemon more successful than Konamis yugioh.
But you make a great point here that PkMn shares with another HUGE franchise, Star Wars: diversification of products. It was everywhere and has continued to be so. A big difference is that TPC keeps it’s IP fairly well under control, while lucasfilm, and george himself, were very liberal about who and what could be done with it. (Tho, I’d collect Pkemon Tikis in a heart beat, Nintendo!..)
But with star wars, it was kinda like, “What else can we slap the name on?”
While with Pokemon it seemed a lot more, “Should we, slap the name on this?”
Maybe it’s the difference in philosophy of business and marketing in Japan versus the US. Nintendo would never sell to a venture capital firm, for example because it has no interst in the integrity of the IP. Disney will try to milk Star Wars, Hasbro :: Magic the Gathering, until selling it to a Private equity firm to be picked clean, zombified, then scavenged with a microscope.
edit You’re right… Should have read a comment further. So it’s not a cultural thing. Dang. Well, go Nintendo.
AAAaaaaanD, it’s not just Konami with YuGiOh. Magic has been printing limited release promos for multiple times the after market rate too.
A large benefit Pokemon has is that a majority of the company is privately owned. This allows them to focus on what they feel is best for the brand long term as opposed to making the line go up every quarter.
