The Pokémon Company Recorded Its Highest Profits Ever In 2020

Nice job, Pokémon Company

Insane that Pokemon Go peaked during the "stay at home" year... I don't play it so, how does that even work?

Gamefreak, imagine how much money you could make if you spend like 2 years developing each mainline game, with good animations, voice acting, no handholding! You could be ROLLING in cash!

Well, Sword and Shield are the best-selling Pokemon games since Gold and Silver, so I'm not surprised.

Welp, sounds like we're not getting any meaningful upgrades to the Pokemon series with numbers like that.
Especially considering the Arceus game looks just as muddy and low poly as Sw/Sh. It's a shame that Pokemon is wasted on Gamefreak.

Good to hear Go is still booming!

@Just_2_milky Why? From a business standpoint while would they if people buy everything that they release regardless of quality? It doesn't matter if those would sell a little better if they, with the limited times and resources that they put are already selling more than enough. It's simply less investment and great income instead of risking more investment for the possibility of more income that doesn't reflect said effort in their eyes. If people really want a better product you better start voting with your wallets because reviews and comments mean nothing to them.

To be fair I do think that these games are already taking a couple years. They actually need more time and more resources for something good.

@Thoughts They put in a bunch of functionality to allow you to play from home, though it's been removed now.

I just don't understand teh appeal of GO; it's not a real Pokemon game, it's severely limited, it doesn't even have every Pokemon. Who still plays it and why? Why do they spend so much money on it? It's no wonder GF releases such piss-poor mainline games these days. Why should they make any effort when their mobile trash makes all teh profit?

@Chamver I don't spend real world money on the game, but it's something to do on the bus ride to and from work, as well as when I'm on my lunch break, or if I'm at home I'll open the app up and catch whatever Pokemon are on the screen at the time.

Ah, a great explanation as to why Game Freak isn't going to work hard. People blindly support Pokémon as much as they complain about it.

And as their profits go up, my interest in the series goes down. Not because they're making more money, but the games aren't what they used to be. Maybe I'm just old.

Ugh, does this mean we’re going to be forced to stomach more if this mindless droll? Could they at least add meaningful gameplay?

The second best selling franchise ever.
Close to 400 million games sold.

Wow, great work, POGO! Who would have thought one beautiful Pokemon autotune remix song from 2013 could boost sales so much?
POGO is one legendary guy.

It always confused me why people spend so much money on Pokemon Go. I don't exactly have a roburst locale with pokestops to make much use of the game, the pandemic permanently changing some public places loaded with them being locked off kinda killed my drive a lot. But since 2018 I've spent I think.....$2? They want a dollar to enter a community event day, yeah? Did two of those overall. Still got to level 33 with dozens upon dozens of shinies, luckies and high powered monsters.

It's just a good excuse for going for jogs to me.

I guess its just more expected to lay down some money in more populated areas where you don't go with gyms being defended for periods of 40+ days per serving.

If Nintendo Life is primarily a UK website, then why do the articles translate currencies into US dollars?

@Ulysses Presumably because it's the currency of choice for commerce and because their is a huge number of users in the US and other countries besides just the UK.

If only Game Freak would hire more developers there team is incredibly small for a company worth so much. It would probably help solve a lot of the criticism recent entries have faced as well.

Oh hey look, a Pokemon article! Time for about another 50-250 comments of whining and complaining about how much ya'll hate Pokemon but that it's fine because you're fans!

I'm not surprised by this at all. Video game sales are up almost entirely across the board. PoGo probably made a killing off of remote raid passes over the last year. But if anyone thinks that's just "another case of brain dead Pokemon fanboys" - welcome to the world of mobile gaming. Mobile games make crap loads of money off of micro transactions once they find their niche. Whether you like that or not, that's just how things are.

Because of course they did. Wish this would be visible in the quality of their games but alas.

@ObeseChihuahua2 : Those numbers are disingenuous as they do not include Crystal’s sales numbers while the Sword/Shield numbers also include the physical re-release with the expansion pass included (which for some fulfils the role that the “third versions” used to), which would place Sword/Shield just behind Diamond/Pearl/Platinum (from last count), which it is likely to beat though.

Maybe it's just me but I think using what looks like a modified version of the Breath of the Wild engine for some of their latest games was a bad move. I've never truly liked the graphics in Breath of the Wild, especially the kind of fake/plastic/glossy "toon" shader effect across everything that gives a really low-res blurry look to all the textures and stuff, and I like them even less when they're in a Pokemon game. I feel it's an overall drop in the quality of art and presentation in the Pokemon games and a step in the wrong direction and potential on a slight downward spiral in terms of aesthetic beauty for their games going forward if they continue on this path. So I'm not happy the having their highest profits ever will probably confirm to them that they are doing the right thing, when I don't think the are in terms of the aesthetic they are embracing in many of their new games. The new Pokemon Snap also looks very generic and kinda soulless "shadery" 3D at times too imo. It's not made me excited for whatever they put out next--that's for sure.

I wonder if they're going to use any of that money to invest into the games to make them better.

Wow. I don't think I realized how not-so-profitable the Pokemon Company was prior to the release of Pokemon Go. I realize the last few years throw off the scale of that Y-axis, but I wouldn't have guessed with as popular as Pokemon are that the company would have posted net losses a couple times in the past decade.

@link3710 What functionality has been removed? I play PoGo on two accounts daily and can't think of anything. Remote raiding is up, inviting to raid is up, increased range for stop-spins is still up, etc etc etc. The only thing not up right now is increased trade-range and that's still a recurring thing for limited dates like it's been since it first appeared. Oh and EX raids are still gone to stop people gathering in large groups. And all events are still laid out so you can complete them (mostly) from home.

There are of course some events that included certain bonuses etc. that are ended now, but new events like that come all the time. I used to be bored with PoGo for months at a time 1-2 years ago, but this last year it's constantly been new events, seasons, challenges and so on.

@Spideron Quoting the article I was referencing since I'm not a heavy player:

"In April the game added a feature where your buddy Pokémon would gather gifts from nearby PokéStops even if you didn’t leave your home, and now it will only do that if you’re running low. The distance walked to hatch eggs is going back up to where it was previously, and incense that attracts Pokémon will only have increased effectiveness while walking."

@link3710 Fair enough. I just reacted to your statement 'They put in a bunch of functionality to allow you to play from home, though it's been removed now.' as nothing's really been removed. These perks are constantly being tweaked, and some come and go as various events are active. All's well though, have a nice day!

The craziest thing is that there were actually a few years prior to Pokemon Go where TPC was losing money.

Doesn't exactly smell like a company that was ever rolling in money until fairly recently, despite the size of the Pokemon IP.