You’ll never believe me, but it looks like the long-running Pokemon franchise is popular in its home country. Incredible, I know. A new study (which I can file under “duh”) revealed that Pokemon is Japan’s most “wide-reaching brand” in 2024.
The study ranked franchises in seven categories: games, apps, books, music, and so on. The marketing firm GEM Partners conducted the study, and a number of other game IP (intellectual property) made the cut as well.
Popular names like Dragon Quest came in 10th (honestly, that’s far below what I thought it would be), Monster Strike (whatever that is) came in 9th, and Genshin Impact came in 11th.
The study employed “reach points” to determine brands’ popularity, which represent the number of people who interact with them. The study was conducted monthly using data from 100,000 Japanese residents with ages ranging from 15-69.
Notably, the Pokémon brand achieved an impressive 65,578 points, with 80% of its points attributed to mobile app games, 11,619 points from console games, and 2,728 points from video content.
What Does This All Mean?
I believe the big takeaway here is how little the console video games mattered. 80% of Pokemon’s wide-reaching appeal came from mobile app games. That’s incredibly sad to me.
It tells me that, number one, the world has changed (and not in a good way) and number two that Game Freak has severely damaged its reputation for creating console (or handheld) video games.
Pokemon should be selling even better on consoles, but with hot messes like Scarlet and Violet, it’s no wonder fans are turning to their phones rather than their Switch. I’m a Pokemon fan, but I’d be an even bigger fan if games of the quality of Black and White 2 were the norm.
Hopefully, the Switch 2 will bless us with a good Pokemon game. It’s been a few years since we got one of those.
What do you guys think about this? Let me know in the comments below. And for more on Pokemon, read our other stories here.