>$113.7 billionHow did Pokémon get so successful? No other franchise is even close. What did they do right? Its pushing 30 years old and honestly it might be to the point where some cards or memorabilia might be in museums in the future as culturally important artifacts like some art and media is.
>>58185927https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_media_franchises
>easy to get into>hard to master>even then, rng still wins>stayed the same for pretty much 30+ yearsthis right here is where a lot of franchises die. a new leader/ceo/board/director/owner takes over and fucks everything uptomb raider 2 is still the best selling game of all time but damn shit went south after the third game and really shit the bed in the rebootsbioware used to be king of the american roleplaying games but holy hot shit they got popular and hired fans and boom, dogshitcityblizzard used to be king of mmos but once microsoft came in.. yeah the list can go on but you get the ideapokemon stuck to its guns and didnt sell out
>>58185927not made by murricans.
>>58185927There is no real answer. People have tried to unravel what caused Pokemania to hit the world for decades. And they'll keep trying for decades more.It was a fluke event.
>>58186001I guess it did come out at the peak of the 90s toy craze consumerism.
IMO it's the connectivity aspect. Many monster raising games have you cycle out your monsters frequently, in Pokemon you can pick 6 and they become your best friends for life. And when the next game comes out you can transfer your old friends in any keep adventuring. No other game requires as much connectivity with other people to complete either.
>>58185927>How did Pokémon get so successful?I liked it so it became popular
>>58185965>pokemon stuck to its guns and didnt sell out????????
>>58185927Aggressive marketing and tons of entry-points that require little to no investment (a single TCG pack, watching animated media, and when the 2010's hit, freemium mobile games, etc.) to get hooked, combined with extremely iconic designs.
>>58186133was that the only line you read?
simple and cute monsters, most of the revenue is from merch
>>58185965Blizzard went to shit long before ms bought them.
>>58185965>microshartTry: Activision, lil zoom.
>>58186001>It was a fluke event>basically the first time in history a multimedia franchise launched globally as a multimedia franchiseIf it wasnt Pokemon it was whoever else did it first.
>>58186456This, I tend to forget it's Japanese. It feels so American, and at times I'm sure it's America dictating what happens to the franchise. Either that or Japanese people thinking about the global market. Whatever it was, the bowlderization worked, Pokémon doesn't feel so much like an anime but a product for everyone with no shame for mentioning it.>>58186001It won the consumerism rng. Yugioh, Digimon and others are up there too because we like collecting shit / seeing tons of different creatures & characters.Mobile gacha games are the videogames making the most money in the world right now, the Dragon Ball franchise is hard carried by the profits of Dokkan Battle (it made 13% of either dragon ball or all or Bandai's earnings last year iirc and that's a fuckton).Dokkan is literally collecting all the dragon ball characters.Pokémon had the right idea and pushed it with all of its might 30 years ago, it's that simple. Even as a zombie franchise Digimon keeps selling because our lizard brain likes this kind of thing, and that's a franchise mismanaged as shit. Same for Sonic, the autists who love all the differently colored animals keep it alive despite Sega's best efforts to kill it.
>>58185965>tomb raider 2 is still the best selling game of all timewhat?
>>58186470The fellas at GameFreak were real trailblazers when it came to making sure Pokemon HAD to be localized "as is", we were dangerously close to Pokemon getting the full NoA overhaul treatment were it not for the fact that they'd have to commission an entirely new set of TCG illustrations, an American cartoon instead of localizing the anime, and all the other stuff they'd miss out on because they had to stick with the hypothetical US designs for western brand consistency.
>>58186618Holy shit those american submitted designs are terrible. What the hell were those old executives smoking?
>>58186618Jesus Christ pinned on the cross, I can't believe they attempted to go that far
>>58185965>tomb raider 2 is still the best selling game of all timewhere the fuck did you get this from? its not even close.
RPGs were a huge genre back in the day and still dominate sales for indie titles. Pokemon managed to combined it with collectable monsters which was also extremely popular. The designs and gameplay made it both accessible and acceptable for small children, which many card games and RPG's were not.
>>58186730>>58186784It's from black grafitti artists the Japs interviewed to understand and advertise to hip-hop americans. Unfortunately the black people were right as the japs forced too many cutemons in the second game that killed pokemania.
>>58186840Nope, Pokemania ended because Nintendo as a whole was badly losing the consolewars with Sony, so the entirety of Nintendo's platforms were decreed as "gay baby games for gay babies" and all the kids who wanted to be cool like their older brothers dropped Nintendo so they could play the "real games" on Playstation and even more importantly, Playstation 2.
>>58185965>>58185927The real reason is sexooooo monster girls
>>58185927right place, right time
>>58185978is that all you think about?
>>58186849Didn't help that gen 3 was (is) an objectively step down from gen 2
>>58186948Pokemon wasn't changing any minds no matter what it did unless it abandoned Nintendo to be on PS2, Nintendo already sealed their fate with the Gamecube having Wacky Wahoo Sunshine and cartoony-ass Wind Waker.
>>58186948Gen 3 was great.>>58186849I remember this happening. Pokemon went from being the coolest thing ever to something you would be publicly bullied for caring about. Playing anything on a nintendo or gameboy was suddenly cringe while the playstation was the end all be all of maturity.
>>58186967Now Pokémon is cool again because the TCG had a huge boost with zoomers the past few years. And Pokémon Go too, people who didnt know anything about Pokémon were playing it just to get out of the house
>>58186962I feel like Nintendo got hit harder by the CD-ROM thing than the "mature games" thing, it didn't help but ultimately I think it was the CD-ROM that murdered N64 and GC, in hindsight we can look back and say that it was necessary but at the time was very hard too see it that way.
>>58186972>Now Pokémon is cool again because the TCG had a huge boost with zoomers the past few years.really? isn't Sôylennials the ones scalping the TCG? also, Zoomers don't have that much of dispensable income to indulge crap like that.
>>58186984Not the actual physical TCG, it's TCG Pocket that's doing numbers for Pokemon.They figured out how to have their cake and eat it too: let the scalpers scalp the shit out of physical cards to make obscene profit off of them, while everyone else can play Pocket, which literally cannot be scalped by virtue of being a freemium game, which can ALSO generate profit.
>worked at grocery store for 3 years>lots of kids wearing Pokémon, Mario and Sonic shirts>never saw a single mega man shirtwhy does nobody love my boy.
>>58186998Because Capcom hates MegaMan and looking at modern Capcom is better that stay dead instead of getting the Wilds/DD2 treatment, Capcom abandoned Japan and MegaMan without a Japanese identity is not MegaMan.
>>58186618NoA was always dogshit.This is known.
>>58186998Did they even still sell megaman merch?It feels like they want the IP to whither and die.
>>58185927It's also extremely and easily collectible. Every other franchise is just trading cards, but many Pokemon designs also demand physical merch that Sanrio or TMNT can't even match
>>58187080>>58186998Jada is doing the IP justice. Not as much as with Street Fighter, but they've handled it better than any other company in the past 20 years
>>58186998Megaman was very poorly promoted in favor of adult games and fighting games. Im surprised too because it has all the tropes kids love
>>58186998Why in God's name would kids know what a Megaman is when they haven't released a new game in like a decade now?
>>58185927Pokemon became the entire generation's childhood friend and then this entire generation also passes it to their kids because the content is surely kid friendly. A perpetual nostalgia loop has been created.
>>58187676Youtubers like to brag about Harry Potter being Millennial's Star Wars when they couldn't be more wrong.
hundreds of creatures to discover and grow attached to right from the beginning. has a broad appeal with selection, multiple mons for everyone to call their bros.
>>58185927>Major multimedia launch in a period of time where tons of brands were finding their footing hitting the kids market like Digimon, Power Rangers, Beetleborgs, Mystic Knights, Monster Rancher, Tamagotchi, and so on due to Fox Kids and Kids WB.>Extremely easy to get into for every age group to understand and grasp with kids being able to clear the games without any status moves or much thought and adults being able to pace themselves and realize what to ignore to add some challenge to the game.>Appealed to parents who wanted something "Clean" for their kids at the time.My mom got it for me because it was fairly innocuous and she knew what demographic the brand image was trying to appeal to at the time. She also loves Pikachu so I think that helped.>Forced kids to actually talk to people on the schoolyard to find out what version of game they had and if they could trade Pokemon with each other.>Was consistent with airing its anime on Kids WB I think it was instead of going to cable which further broadened the market it could reach and until gen 3 or so didn't go to cable at all (Which coincidentally was when it started to lose a lot of its favor with people in my experience).>Because there was no internet prevalence yet you had a lot of rumors start thanks to Mew under the truck or holding B, down+B, A+B increased your catch rate, Missingno, and so on to further word of mouth.>Game encouraged restarting your save to trade Pokemon to your friends thanks to the starters and Eevee.>Game encouraged replaying it in general due to how short a full playthrough was.>Series stayed consistent in how it plays and made it very clear what was a spinoff and what wasn't to the point that even today even though PLA and Z-A are considered "Mainline" people can still view them as spinoffs due to how their gameplay is different from the typical formula.
>>58185927There's a plethora of why pokemon is so successful. As for why others couldn't compete against Pokemon is simply this: The Market has decided Pokemon is the best and they only want Pokemon. It's why so many people vehemently disregarded every Pokemon clone attempt out there.
