Pokemon franchise hits over 300 million sales

Speaking to Famitsu, The Pokemon Company has announced that there have been over 300 million cumulative sales of Pokemon games.

Referring to games released between February 1996 and November 2017, the company’s president, Ishihara Tsuneaka said that the figure included global sales of Pokemon games, including downloads. It doesn’t, however, include sales or figures relating to the mobile smash hit Pokemon Go.

The first Pokemon game releases in 1996 were Pokemon Red, Green and Blue for the Nintendo Game Boy, which came to the US in 1998 and the UK in 1999. These games were also re-released on the Nintendo Virtual Console in 2016. Since then, there have been 26 core games for the Nintendo handheld systems, under the various different sub-titles along with conversions of the trading card game, and spin-offs such as Pokemon Stadium for the N64 and Pokken.

The most recent Pokken game, Pokken Tournament DX, was released earlier this year for the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo has confirmed that the Pokemon franchise will also come to the console in 2018. The latest Pokemon Games were released this month for the 3DS as Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon.

It’s estimated that the worldwide market for Pokemon as a franchise is just under $53 billion (¥6 trillion) with 65 per cent of its market outside of Japan.