The Pokémon Company reveal FY2021/22 sales. 60 million games, 9.1 billion cards. Huge increase on FY2020/21

Serebii · Jun 10, 2022

Just a small total change as The Pokémon Company have updated their Corporate page. All numbers as of March 2022

They have shipped over 440 million Pokémon related software. This is an increase of 60 million from last year

They have produced over 43.2 billion cards. This is an increased of 9.1 billion on the previous year

To compare, last year's increase was 12 million software and 3.7 billion cards on March 2020

Source: https://corporate.pokemon.co.jp/en/aboutus/figures/

toutoune134 · Jun 10, 2022

9.2 billion Pokemon cards produced between March 2021 and March 2022, means that 21.3% of all printed card since the creation of the Pokemon TCG were printed in that peridod. Absolutely insane, but I'm glad that scalpers lost the fight.

NotLiquid · Jun 10, 2022

Two major Pokémon games within the same fiscal year is a hell of a force to be reckoned with

Lord Fanny · Jun 10, 2022

toutoune134 said:
9.2 billion Pokemon cards produced between March 2021 and March 2022, means that 21.3% of all printed card since the creation of the Pokemon TCG were printed in that peridod. Absolutely insane, but I'm glad that scalpers lost the fight.

The fight is continuous and always fluid

TsarOfAbility · Jun 10, 2022

Ok help me understand these numbers:
9.1 billion cards account for over 20% of cards made in a franchise running since, what, 1996? How is that possible?
Same with software, I get the remakes and arceus account for half that number, but where does the remainder come from?

Kanhir · Jun 10, 2022

I'm astonished that many cards were sold in the midst of a pandemic where kids weren't supposed to play together.

Paragon · Jun 10, 2022

As someone who works with young children, that number of Pokemon Cards makes perfect sense too me. The kids seem to show up with a new deck every week and it's a real pain getting them to put the damn things away long enough to pay attention to the lesson.

Ehoavash · Jun 10, 2022

NotLiquid said:
Two major Pokémon games within the same fiscal year is a hell of a force to be reckoned with

Hope this doesn't become common...

Raigor · Jun 10, 2022

60 million games in one year? How is this even possible?

KillstealWolf · Jun 10, 2022

Pandemic Numbers be wild yoh.

Shaoran Hyku · Jun 10, 2022

If launching 3 Pokemon games in a year works for them I'm sure they'll try it again

Zaimokuza · Jun 10, 2022

Raigor said:
60 million games in one year? How is this even possible?

2 mainline games + backcatalogue sales.

I'm going to guess they sold a lot of vc games on 3ds. I bought the Pokemon Trading Card game for instance

Charamiwa · Jun 10, 2022

No way there was 30 million back catalog sales like it's an insane number.

Lego · Jun 10, 2022

More sales of Snap, Sword and Shield, the 3DS games, hmm. Still an insane number.

Serebii · Jun 10, 2022

TsarOfAbility said:
Ok help me understand these numbers:
9.1 billion cards account for over 20% of cards made in a franchise running since, what, 1996? How is that possible?
Same with software, I get the remakes and arceus account for half that number, but where does the remainder come from?

They heavily increased production to counter scalpers

2022/2022 - 43.2 billion cards - (as of the end of March 2022)
2020/2021 - 34.1 billion cards - (as of the end of March 2021)
2019/2020 - 30.4 billion cards - (as of the end of March 2020)
2018/2019 - 27.2 billion cards - (as of the end of March 2019)
2017/2018 - 25.7 billion cards - (as of the end of March 2018)
2016/2017 - 23.6 billion cards - (as of the end of March 2017)
2014/2015 - 21.5 billion cards - (as of the end of March 2015)

AcademicSaucer · Jun 10, 2022

60 million seems crazy

ILikeFeet · Jun 10, 2022

Serebii said:
They heavily increased production to counter scalpers

2022/2022 - 43.2 billion cards - (as of the end of March 2022)
2020/2021 - 34.1 billion cards - (as of the end of March 2021)
2019/2020 - 30.4 billion cards - (as of the end of March 2020)
2018/2019 - 27.2 billion cards - (as of the end of March 2019)
2017/2018 - 25.7 billion cards - (as of the end of March 2018)
2016/2017 - 23.6 billion cards - (as of the end of March 2017)
2014/2015 - 21.5 billion cards - (as of the end of March 2015)

Best way to do that is to buy out their printing partner. Also consolidates any other potential printing work that needs to be done

LinkStrikesBack · Jun 10, 2022

Zaimokuza said:
2 mainline games + backcatalogue sales.

I'm going to guess they sold a lot of vc games on 3ds. I bought the Pokemon Trading Card game for instance

That's an absolutely ridiculous back catalogue sales number though. Arceus was at 12.64m units and BDSP at 14.65m , https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2022/05/pokemon-legends-arceus-has-sold-over-12-million-units-globally#:~:text=As part of Nintendo's latest,worldwide up to March 2022 ,https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/finance/software/index.html

SwSh went from 21.1m to 24.27m = 3.17m.
https://www.resetera.com/threads/ni...hardware-q4-4-73m-43-7-yoy-84-59m-ltd.421319/

Let's Go went from 13.28M to 14.53m. = 1.25m

So that's a total of 12.64+14.65 + 3.17 + 1.25 = 31.71m units

Where did they sell another 28mish units last year, I'm so confused.

Edit: Pokemon snap was another few million, at 2.2m by September 21, but that's still a ridiculous gap.

Raigor · Jun 10, 2022

LinkStrikesBack said:
That's an absolutely ridiculous back catalogue sales number though. Arceus was at 12.64m units and BDSP at 14.65m , https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2022/05/pokemon-legends-arceus-has-sold-over-12-million-units-globally#:~:text=As part of Nintendo's latest,worldwide up to March 2022 ,https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/finance/software/index.html

SwSh went from 21.1m to 24.27m = 3.17m.
https://www.resetera.com/threads/ni...hardware-q4-4-73m-43-7-yoy-84-59m-ltd.421319/

Let's Go went from 13.28M to 14.53m. = 1.25m

So that's a total of 12.64+14.65 + 3.17 + 1.25 = 31.71m units

Where did they sell another 28mish units last year, I'm so confused.

Edit: Pokemon snap was another few million, at 2.2m by September 21, but that's still a ridiculous gap.

Yep, the math is not right.

28 million from VC is impossible.

Zaimokuza · Jun 10, 2022

LinkStrikesBack said:
That's an absolutely ridiculous back catalogue sales number though. Arceus was at 12.64m units and BDSP at 14.65m , https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2022/05/pokemon-legends-arceus-has-sold-over-12-million-units-globally#:~:text=As part of Nintendo's latest,worldwide up to March 2022 ,https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/finance/software/index.html

SwSh went from 21.1m to 24.27m = 3.17m.
https://www.resetera.com/threads/ni...hardware-q4-4-73m-43-7-yoy-84-59m-ltd.421319/

Let's Go went from 13.28M to 14.53m. = 1.25m

So that's a total of 12.64+14.65 + 3.17 + 1.25 = 31.71m units

Where did they sell another 28mish units last year, I'm so confused.

Edit: Pokemon snap was another few million, at 2.2m by September 21, but that's still a ridiculous gap.

Raigor said:
Yep, the math is not right.

28 million from VC is impossible.

I mean, the only other place where they sell pokemon games is the 3ds. The store is shutting down, so it's not unrealistic to think a huge boom in sales happened.
Is it an incredible jump, beyond any realistic prediction? Yes, but it's also the only other possible explanation.

Furthermore, the 3ds has a lot of pokemon games and some of them (the vc ones) are pretty cheap.

Serebii · Jun 10, 2022

Raigor said:
Yep, the math is not right.

28 million from VC is impossible.

It's possible they're also factoring in UNITE, Café ReMix etc.?

But then they're not factoring in GO

LinkStrikesBack · Jun 10, 2022

Serebii said:
It's possible they're also factoring in UNITE, Masters etc.?

But then they're not factoring in GO

I thought that, but like you've actually said in the past, Unite has had over 70m downloads alone,

https://twitter.com/SerebiiNet/status/1514198618948968449

Unless there's some really funky counting like they're only counting downloads on the Switch and omitting Android/iOS downloads, which I don't get why they'd do that?

Qubie · Jun 10, 2022

LinkStrikesBack said:
I thought that, but like you've actually said in the past, Unite has had over 70m downloads alone,

https://twitter.com/SerebiiNet/status/1514198618948968449

Unless there's some really funky counting like they're only counting downloads on the Switch and omitting Android/iOS downloads, which I don't get why they'd do that?

Maybe they count some revenue from mobile games as one sold game? Sounds not quite right but I have no other explanation.

Saladin · Jun 10, 2022

Good god those numbers are mad! Especially the cards!

Glio · Jun 10, 2022

ILikeFeet said:
Best way to do that is to buy out their printing partner. Also consolidates any other potential printing work that needs to be done

Nah, that's exactly what you shouldn't do when a bubble is inflating. When the figures normalize, you would end up with a printer on your property that you cannot make profitable exclusively.

ILikeFeet · Jun 10, 2022

Glio said:
Nah, that's exactly what you shouldn't do when a bubble is inflating. When the figures normalize, you would end up with a printer on your property that you cannot make profitable exclusively.

While they should fear the eventual post-pandemic collapse, the TCG should be sustainable enough to make the purchase worth it. And they don't have to exclusively make pokemon cards. If necessary the printing company can still do other contracts

Gaardus · Jun 10, 2022

Does the card count include stuff printed by Wizards of the Coast?

Falchion · Jun 10, 2022

That's a mind blowing amount of cards.

The Pokémon Company reveal FY2021/22 sales. 60 million games, 9.1 billion cards. Huge increase on FY2020/21

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