This year marks the 20th anniversary of Pokémon and the franchise is still going strong. Pokken Tournament is set to be released in March, Pokémon Go will be available sometime later this year and the original Red, Blue and Yellow games are being re-released in February. It’s as busy a year as ever for the Pokémon franchise that originated in Japan two decades ago. Sonic, Crash Bandicoot, Dragon Ball Z and countless other franchises have faded away while Pokémon has remains square in the spotlight.
The only franchise that rivals Pokémon in sales is Mario, which has had over a decade head start. From brilliant characters to a monstrous market to their wildly successful multimedia platform, there are a number of reasons why Pokémon has endured as well as it has.
One of the primary keys to Pokémon’s success is that fact that it’s grown from so much more than just a video game series. From the moment that Ash and Pikachu graced TV screens, the franchise has been evolving and growing its fanbase. Each facet of Pokémon, the show, the cards and the games, has played into a larger universe that’s created something very unique in entertainment. The universe has resulted in hundreds of millions of games sold, the show’s 800 episodes has made it the longest running series based on a video game and then there’s the billions upon billions of trading cards that have been produced.
With those kinds of numbers and that growth though, there were many things that could have gone wrong. Some of the small changes made over the years have been just as important as anything else. Ash’s first Pokémon for example, was supposed to be Clefairy, but was changed to Pikachu in an attempt to appeal to a broader audience. That small change alone morphed everything that came after it.
One of the most important things that Pokémon has done is a rather simple one that is often overlooked, it hasn’t sabotaged itself. Several times over the past two decades, the Pokémon franchise has had bestselling games. Despite the fact that they’ve released a plethora of titles, there has only been one or two that were truly bad, with really none in the last five years. Pokémon hasn’t given fans a reason to not like it, and that’s not as easy as it sounds.
Among the hardest things for a franchise to do is to maintain favor with both hardcore and casual gamers. Just look at Call of Duty. The series is one of the most successful ever, but people love to hate it for a number of good and bad reasons. People just love to hate things that are really successful. It’s one of the reason so many of the best athletes and teams have so many haters. Pokémon though, has managed to largely avoid that backlash, thanks in part to the fact that it’s stayed true to itself over the years, for the most part at least. The franchise hasn’t given people much a reason to dislike it. It might sound simple, but just ask Ubisoft or Activision how hard it is to create a successful franchises that a lot of people don’t end up hating.
When it comes to the games, one of the most impressive things is just how powerful the Pokémon brand is. It’s allowed Pokémon Snap, a game about taking pictures, to have sold nearly as many copies for the N64 as Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare did for the Xbox One, and Pokémon Snap was just one of many spin-off games. Many of the franchise’s main titles have sold tens of millions of titles each with the franchise as a whole selling more than 260 million games.
Pokemon has become so successful that it is routinely featured in things other than its own franchise. The Pokémon brand has become an ingrained part of gaming and Nintendo without a doubt, but it has also carved itself a nice little niche in pop culture as a whole. From T-shirts to movies and everything in between, the Pokémon Company rakes in $1.5 billion annually thanks to the popularity of Pikachu and friends.
There’s no sign of slowing down either. A Pokémon symphony, called Pokémon Symphonic Evolutions, is making its way around the country right now, the official Pokémon Center website went live late last year and Nintendo has recently said that it plans on doing more and more with the Pokémon brand. The pocket monsters we all know and love are continuing on as strong as ever. With the release of exciting new titles and the re-release of classics right around the corner, the Pokémon fanbase is sure to grow even more in its twentieth year.