Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket celebrated its first anniversary yesterday, and since launch it has generated over $1.3 billion in revenue. That's an 8000% increase in developer DeNA's games segment sales, and a figure impressive enough to give it the most lucrative year of any Pokémon mobile game ever.
Even the titan that was Pokémon Go didn't draw that staggering amount of revenue in its first year. Despite nearly achieving world peace in 2016, Pokémon Go falls $245 million short of TCG Pocket's revenue, according to data from AppMagic (via PocketGamer).
It's quite clear to see what made Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket so successful in its first year. Pokémon is one of the biggest franchises in the world, so naturally fans want to check out what's next from the IP, and the TCG has been beloved for decades.
In recent years, interest in the Pokémon Trading Card Game has soared thanks to collector interest due to the worth of high-ticket cards. Of course, this has led to problems with the physical game like scalping, but over in the digital world that doesn't exist. Then again, you also can't hold your cards in-person. Pros and cons, I guess.
