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Pokémon TCG Pocket generated $120m+ in less than 3 weeks [UPDATE4: $500m+ in its first 97 days]

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AruanaRiva said:
Totally disagreed on this point. One of the main reason why Pokemon can maintain its brand power for years is because it rarely has lull moment like no games or anime to keep pushing the brand to mass audience conciousness.

Having multiple medium to smaller games released to try expanding audience while keep putting Pokemon IP on tv screen on marketing is going to be far more beneficial than chasing only 4 or 5m seller which can take too long to release leaving too many empty space between main title release.
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I'm saying that, looking at the kind of numbers TCGP is driving, new content releases for the existing major products are just as valuable (likely even more valuable) than a 1-2m selling spinoff, that has to be co-produced with an external studio that likely can't/won't spend all of its development capacity just on Pokemon titles. So it's probably more beneficial to the business to use Go, TCGPocket etc content releases as stuff that can be produced on tight schedules around anime/mainline tie-in stuff (since production time for a TCG expansion deck is minimal compared to developing a full game) - that leaves the spinoff games to be scoped and produced without as much concern for hitting particular dates (which are always a limiting factor in Pokemon).

Not saying they should stop spinoffs at all - just that the environment to produce them is completely different than e.g. the DS era, where the relationship between production time/cost and revenue is completely different than now.
 
Thankfully the new set of cards looks like an absolutely blast, and they're slowly adding more depth to the game with stuff like hand disruption and Pokemon Tools (and supposedly data for a Stadium subset of cards exists in the files as well). Trading is a big swing and a miss but the actual cards are looking great.
 
Undead Warrior said:
They really took four months to come up with "Hearthstone dusting but way, way worse" lmao. There's no way they let this rock, right?

.....right??
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I knew it was always going to be a headache since you get a lot of free packs when you are a new account.

So they were concerned by people creating multiple new accounts and transfer rare cards to their main one.

Still, they might have overcorrected things. It is pretty clear in their previous announcement that they were going to be conservative at first but would be open to change things.
 
Lelouch0612 said:
I knew it was always going to be a headache since you get a lot of free packs when you are a new account.

So they were concerned by people creating multiple new accounts and transfer rare cards to their main one.

Still, they might have overcorrected things. It is pretty clear in their previous announcement that they were going to be conservative at first but would be open to change things.
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The solution to that is to gate trading behind player level. You know, like how they gate battling? Put it behind level 20, 25 or whatever bam problem solved. I understand very well the need to be a bit conservative and then make it more lenient instead of the other way around but this misses the mark by waaaay too much. I know I'll be leaving a one-star review in the app until it changes.
 
New expansion is out today with over 150 new cards (focusing mostly on Gen 2 & 4).

They also gifted trading currencies to all players.

Personally had some very lucky draws 😊 Funnily enough, my first three boosters all had a Darkrai (one ⭐️⭐️ and two 🔷️🔷️🔷️🔷️)
 
saicho said:
just want to clarify how trading works... I'm gonna pick a card that I want to trade but then I would have no idea what card I'll get back before the other player accepts it?
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Well I think trading is limited to people on your friends list, so you can coordinate what's being sent, but yeah there's currently no way to designate what you actually want.
 
saicho said:
just want to clarify how trading works... I'm gonna pick a card that I want to trade but then I would have no idea what card I'll get back before the other player accepts it?
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I did a trade yesterday. You send a card offer to someone on your friend's list. They come back with an offer from their end. You then agree to the swap or decline it. You will get a chance to see the full trade before you complete it. You are protected from getting burned with a bad or unwanted return.
 
SquidEnthusiast said:
Well I think trading is limited to people on your friends list, so you can coordinate what's being sent, but yeah there's currently no way to designate what you actually want.
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People on my friends list are just people I had match with online who I added though. They are not really my friend for me to coordinate.

Josh5890 said:
I did a trade yesterday. You send a card offer to someone on your friend's list. They come back with an offer from their end. You then agree to the swap or decline it. You will get a chance to see the full trade before you complete it. You are protected from getting burned with a bad or unwanted return.
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Thanks for the details. But still I would have no idea what he would offer back or which card he would want or if he has any cards I want. It's like shooting in the dark.
 
well trading is just bad, it might be my fault for not reading but even getting the tokens was complicated. it should be more straightforward
 
saicho said:
People on my friends list are just people I had match with online who I added though. They are not really my friend for me to coordinate. Thanks for the details. But still I would have no idea what he would offer back or which card he would want or if he has any cards I want. It's like shooting in the dark.
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The way things are set up...
Trading threads on enthusiast forums and/or Trading Discord servers here we go! 😅
 
saicho said:
Thanks for the details. But still I would have no idea what he would offer back or which card he would want or if he has any cards I want. It's like shooting in the dark.
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Yeah, you would have to coordinate those details outside of the game. It would be nice if there was an option to request a specific card from a friend's collection.
 
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As expected I'd say.
 
You get 100 trade tokens when you win a battle online, up to 500 a day!

That would a bit better right lol. Hopefully they figure something out
 
I think the whole trading process seems cumbersome anyway, I get people offering random trades with no clue as to what they want or who have no clue of what I seek, I haven't made a single trade yet because of that.
 
I have not proof of it being related to TCG Pocket, but the retail market for the TCG has been DEVASTATED the last couple of months. Prismatic Evolutions is impossible to find anywhere in the world, scalpers and bots are creating chaos, people are punching each other in stores to buy collections. It's crazy out here.

Personally I do not care, I'm buying Paradox Rift singles.
 
Joseki said:
I have not proof of it being related to TCG Pocket, but the retail market for the TCG has been DEVASTATED the last couple of months. Prismatic Evolutions is impossible to find anywhere in the world, scalpers and bots are creating chaos, people are punching each other in stores to buy collections. It's crazy out here.

Personally I do not care, I'm buying Paradox Rift singles.
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Yeah I didn't realize how much TCG blew up, it's getting bad and its sickening how crazy they are going over the cards. Like they can just print alot more. These retail places I think got caught off guard with this mess
 
Tbone5189 said:
Yeah I didn't realize how much TCG blew up, it's getting bad and its sickening how crazy they are going over the cards. Like they can just print alot more. These retail places I think got caught off guard with this mess
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Some places don't even want to carry them anymore.
 
Tbone5189 said:
Yeah I didn't realize how much TCG blew up, it's getting bad and its sickening how crazy they are going over the cards. Like they can just print alot more. These retail places I think got caught off guard with this mess
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I think something regarding the prints, at least here in Europe, actually went wrong.

Here in Italy we still haven't got the ETB of Prismatic Evolutions, it was delayed to next week. Even the more standard collections have had zero restocks after D1.
 
Pokemon TCG is so crazy because of the bloated reselling market and speculators, when you can roll for the chance to pull several hundred dollars of value out of a single pack of cards they're gonna get snapped up by gamblers (which I feel like is becoming just as destructive as drug addiction in many cases despite attitudes both legally and societal being much softer towards for whatever reason).
 
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Tbone5189 said:
Damn it's crazy, they need to figure something out then. Cuz situation is crazy. How often do they release new packs? I only play pocket so I'm not fully familiar with how TCG Works
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I believe they release a new set every 3 months. March is the next one, and it's already sold out. They may want to buy another printing company or something
 
storres said:
I know they bought one like a year or two ago, clearly it wasn't exclusive enough
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@Serebii maybe he can give insight. I could of sworn like 20% or something of all Pokemon cards was sold in like 2022 or 2023.

I kno it jumped during covid but yeah. They need to obviously get another company to help print these cards cuz if this last pack got people going crazy and the one in march sold out….. I feel bad for just casual people playing or collecting this hobby
 
Tbone5189 said:
@Serebii maybe he can give insight. I could of sworn like 20% or something of all Pokemon cards was sold in like 2022 or 2023.

I kno it jumped during covid but yeah. They need to obviously get another company to help print these cards cuz if this last pack got people going crazy and the one in march sold out….. I feel bad for just casual people playing or collecting this hobby
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www.polygon.com

The great Pokémon card shortage has a solution: 9 billion new cards

It’s super effective!
www.polygon.com www.polygon.com

25% of Pokémon cards printed, prior to July 2022, were printed between 2020 and 2022.

Between then and March 2024, a total of 21.6 billion cards were produced, which would be exactly 33%.
corporate.pokemon.co.jp

Pokémon in Figures | The Pokémon Company

The Pokémon Company Website. Our mission statement is to enrich both the real world and the virtual world with the Pokémon characters.
corporate.pokemon.co.jp corporate.pokemon.co.jp
 
storres said:
I believe they release a new set every 3 months. March is the next one, and it's already sold out. They may want to buy another printing company or something
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They did in 2022:
The Pokémon Company International, the company responsible for management of the globally popular Pokémon brand outside of Asia, has entered into agreement to purchase North Carolina-based Millennium Print Group, a manufacturer and printer of trading cards and associated packaging in the US. The two companies have been business partners since 2015 with Millennium Print Group serving as longtime printers of The Pokémon Company International’s best-selling product, the Pokémon Trading Card Game.

With this acquisition, The Pokémon Company International aims to further develop Millennium Print Group’s capabilities, infrastructure, and scale to become a premier printer of trading cards, serving the broader industry. Millennium Print Group will continue to operate as a separate, autonomous organization, but will gain both investment and industry- expertise from The Pokémon Company International.
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Their biggest problem is the vast difference of hype between sets with low demand like Shrouded Fable or Stellar Crown, and sets with very high demand such as Prismatic Evolutions or Surging Sparks. The first category can remain on shelves for month untouched while the second one is basically impossible to find. At this point the Pokemon Company should have enough data to guess which set is going to be more popular than another and give them a larger print to accomodate the demand. But it doesn't feel that way so far.
 
toutoune134 said:
They did in 2022:


Their biggest problem is the vast difference of hype between sets with low demand like Shrouded Fable or Stellar Crown, and sets with very high demand such as Prismatic Evolutions or Surging Sparks. The first category can remain on shelves for month untouched while the second one is basically impossible to find. At this point the Pokemon Company should have enough data to guess which set is going to be more popular than another and give them a larger print to accomodate the demand. But it doesn't feel that way so far.
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Unfortunately physical production isn't nearly as scalable as something like server capacity so getting things right is a lot more tricky for something like this.
 
storres said:
I believe they release a new set every 3 months. March is the next one, and it's already sold out. They may want to buy another printing company or something
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It's a new expansion every 2 months, which I actually think that now with the exponential growth in demand is actually too many. In the Scarlet and Violet era we had:

2023
Scarlet & Violet (SVI) - 2023.03
Paldea Evolved (PAL) - 2023.06
Obsidian Flames (OBF) - 2023.08
151 (MEW) - 2023.09 [Special Expansion]
Paradox Rift (PAR) - 2023.11

2024
Paldean Fates (PAF) - 2024.01 [Special Expansion]
Temporal Forces (TEF) - 2024.03
Twilight Masquerade (TWM) - 2024.05
Shrouded Fable (SFA) - 2024.08 [Special Expansion]
Stellar Crown (SCR) - 2024.09
Surging Sparks (SSP) - 2024.11

2025
Prismatic Evolutions (PRE) - 2025.01 [Special Expansion]
Journey Together (JTG) - 2025.03

6 expansions/year is really a lot and the timing of some of them was idiotic too: Paradox Rift was sandwiched between a Gen I set and a Shiny Pokémon set and it was unsold for months. I bought packs/products at an average price of €3/pack because it was perennially discounted as people were too busy scalping 151 and Paldean Fates; Shrouded Fable came out 40 days before Stellar Crown and had the same fate, you find ETB and blisters of it everywhere at big discounts.

I think TPCi should slow down to at most 4 expansions + 1 special expansions a year and better balance the sets. They can't afford to print "unwanted" expansions when the demand for some sets is so high.

Also the average Pokémon TCG buyer has an incredible shit taste: SVI and PAR for example are splendid sets and no one cared about them.
 
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So, based on the above discussion, the sales of PTCG improved or decreased recently? I'm a bit confused.
I think PTCG Pocket will have a certain negative impact on it.
 
Great, I had said 500mil on Pokemon day but might 500mil by set 2 launch

208mil Dec 3rd
291mil Dec 18th
403mil Jan 7th
500mil Feb 4th? (Let kno correct day)


Bonus

Japan spent 172mil for the game and US is at 104mil (1/7)
 
Well I paid for a month of premium this time around so they finally extracted some cash out of me too. First money I've spent on a mobile game in like seven years and I still feel guilty about it.
 
Too many card to get now lol. I don't have much resource left. Please space some of the release haha for my wallet sake.
 
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