Not only is the Pokemon franchise celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2021, according to Safe Betting Sites, it has now cemented itself as the most valuable media franchise globally by surpassing $100B in all-time sales. Quite the milestone in the franchise's history.
While the franchise began its journey as a game, it has since expanded into many other facets of media and entertainment, including anime, movies, trading cards and merchandise, making it one of the most recognizable media franchises in the world. So recognizable in fact that it now sites ahead of Hello Kitty, Winnie the Pooh, Mickey Mouse and even the Star Wars franchise.
Since the original game launch on the GameBoy back in 1996, there have been over 70 Nintendo titles created in the Pokemon franchise. The top eight Nintendo Pokemon games combine for over 150M copies sold. Nintendo Pokemon games as a whole have sold over 350M copies.
Niantic upped the ante when it partnered with Nintendo and the Pokemon Company in 2016 to develop Pokemon Go. The game has had a record-setting 500M downloads and was the third-highest grossing mobile game in the world with $1.2B in estimated player spending.
In 2020 the Pokemon Home appw as launched, allowing users to store their Pokemon items through the cloud. It tallied a whopping 12.3 million downloads last year.