Try wrapping your head around this one: The Pokemon Company just raked in $3.4 billion in net sales for its latest fiscal year. That's a 29% jump from the year before, and it's a record that keeps looking more ridiculous the longer you stare at it. The numbers come from Japanese game industry consultant Dr. Serkan Toto, who flagged the data after Japanese news site Denfaminico Gamer republished it. Translation account Genki picked it up too, noting that The Pokemon Company's sales revenue has grown by 4.4 times over the last five years. In fiscal year 2021, it was pulling in around 120 billion yen, or $769 million. Fast forward and you're looking at 531 billion yen—about $3.4 billion—which is a pretty wild leap by any measure.
And it's not just sales. Net income has apparently ballooned by 13.6 times since 2018, with projections pointing to north of 120 billion yen (roughly $770 million) by the end of the current fiscal year. For context, that's an explosive spike from a paltry 8.8 million yen back in 2018. Honestly, if your bank account grew like that, you'd probably be shouting from the rooftops. But The Pokemon Company? Not so much.
According to Toto, the company is "very likely not happy these stats are out there." That's because they get published automatically in KanpÅ, the Japanese government's official gazette, even though The Pokemon Company is privately held. Toto points out the irony: if The Pokemon Company had been absorbed into Nintendo as a full studio, we'd never see this kind of data. It's the same reason Kadokawa doesn't break out FromSoftware's numbers separately. But here we are, with a front-row seat to Pokemon's financial dominance.
Where's all that money coming from? Part of it is definitely due to Pokemon Pokopia, which moved five million copies just five months after launch. Then there are the Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen re-releases on Switch, which have sold four million copies and cemented the GBA classics as some of the best-selling entries in the franchise's entire history. Those two games alone are doing a ton of heavy lifting, but even that doesn't fully explain the scale of growth here.
There's also that one big game everyone keeps waiting for. Pokemon Winds and Waves still hasn't surfaced, and honestly, at this point The Pokemon Company has earned the right to take its sweet time. With numbers like this, it can afford to. The only thing more impressive than the revenue might be the fact that Pokemon keeps breaking its own records without ever needing to rush.