would pokemon games be the main source of income in the brand if people didnt pirate and bootleg their games en masse 24/7? theyre possibly the most pirated and hacked games in existence.
would pokemon games be the main source of income in the brand if people didnt pirate and bootleg their games en masse 24/7?
no
a fucking shirt from the pokemon center website costs more than an entire mainline game and it's like 99% cheaper to make
This. I spent more on plushies for my kids the first 6 months after they discovered Pokemon than I spent on games and VGC events from Red Version through Ultra Sun.
Nah, pirate sites collectively have 20k downloads at best. Merch and GO would still mog
Pokémon games could have their sales multiplied by 10 and it would still be less than merchandise.
Wrong because the mercahndise is just like 5 times the amount the games do
According to this chart
it's only a bit over 3 times more, but that's also just gross and not considering a bunch of the other stuff that would result in profit, so I guess it depends what we're all talking about.
You might have seen this "highest-grossing franchises" chart from a few years ago floating around, and the answer is simply no. There's not a single Pokemon game in the best selling games of all time, Mario is pirated equally if not more and sells way more than Pokemon, hell there was more gross from Fist of the North star games than there was for Pokemon when the chart came out (the Switch titles likely brought it past that however). Pokemon, as a fad, had always sold more merchandise than it sold the main product. Hell, shit like Disney and Stars War probably have similar overinflated merch sales in comparison to the source material. Mario's a super weird exception, Mario games have out grossed the entire MCU, and that's not counting modest merch sales Mario has. Granted, Mario has a billion spin-offs every console while Pokemon has been mostly relegated to mobile games designed to milk money from people lately, but that's neither here nor there. Also another interesting thing that might have changed post-2020, Pokemon's card game was barely beaten out by YuGiOh's gross.
TLDR: If everything except Pokemon merch were removed from the equation, Pokemon would still be in the top 5 highest grossing franchises of all time, and would beat 7th place (Didney Princess) by a considerable margin (I don't get why Anpanman is so extremely popular when nobody outside of Japan fucking knows about it, that's a franchise that has weird fucking potential).
Im referring exactly to this chart, the games are only around 4 times lower in revenue than merchandise. mario is only like 1/3 higher than pokemon while releasing much more games, remakes and resellings. I dont see which games here sell more than pokrmon? Doesnt this chart prove that mario and pokemon sell the most videogames?
bandai really has it made huh
they have the rights to do much of this shit
No way. Games cost too much to develop and produce compared to how much they sell for.
Look at the TCG for example. An Elite Trainer Box on the Pokemon Center site costs the same as SV but probably has a WAY higher profit margin, has people buying multiples at once vs just one or two purchases of the game and can be released more frequently.
Not to mention all the other crap like plushies, stationary and clothing that are dirt cheap to make and sold at a huge markup.
No way. They can probably bust even if a plush or a shirt only sells triple digit numbers. This is true for all media. The profitability of merch vs movies/TV/games is off the charts.
Bro the reason the games get rushed out so quickly in the first place is to make sure they're on time for the new toy/plush/shirt drops. The game is subservient to the merch, not the other way around.
what merch did they develop with games like hgss, lgpe and bdsp that released 0 (zero) new pokemon or elements?
And lgpe and bdsp are the epitome of videogame capitalism. Your analysis is bullshit and youre wrong, gen 2 was canonically created to even produce easy toys with plain designs, philosophy which they promptly dropped with gen 3
The triple/quadruple game versions + remakes + resellings arent made for the merchandise, yet theyve always been there since the start with the courtesy of shigeru miyamoto and are there to earn more. merchandise only sells more because it costs less and even the average nothing grandma buys plushies, this is something even shudo mentioned.
Nothing to do with them being actually more relevant than the games
>Games get rushed out to meet hard deadlines for merch
>Moneygrubbing remakes to keep a new game on the shelf in the off years
These aren't mutually exclusive, anon.
>what merch did they develop with games like hgss, lgpe and bdsp that released 0 (zero) new pokemon or elements?
According to Amercian trademark law, you need to put out something actively using the trademark every 4 years or you risk losing it. Pokemon is fast approaching the point where they desperately need to do this. You only have so many products in a wave for budgeting, stocking, and marketing reasons, so every Pokemon choice is important. And if you put out something that can't sell, that's shelf space being wasted and retailers won't be interested in further waves because of that.
>The triple/quadruple game versions + remakes + resellings arent made for the merchandise
No, but it gives them a great excuse to do a new subline imprint to refresh an existing line with a new name. That concept was barely a twinkle in toy manufacturer's eyes in the 90's, but by the early 2000's it was standard practice.
>bdsp not pictured because it's a worthless shitstain of a remake
based
Yes. It's why Gen V sold like shit because why buy an expensive console+game when you can just download it from home for free?
No. Most people buy one game per set, while kids will get several pieces of overpriced merch.