Pokémon TCG Pocket matches 91% of Pokémon Go’s launch month revenue through the power of playground rumours

• Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket made $202.2 million in its first 31 days, versus Pokémon Go’s $221.5m

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In just one month since its global release, Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket is already well on its way to becoming the Pokémon franchise’s second-biggest mobile game and one of 2024’s most lucrative new launches industry-wide.

After landing on mobile phones everywhere on October 30th, 2024, TCG Pocket thunderbolted its way to $100 million in a mere 17 days, according to AppMagic estimates. It has already rocketed past $200m since, averaging $6.4m in daily player spending and continuing to hit new highs late into November.

It’s the closest thing to Pokémania since 2016’s Pokémon Go, though less overtly out in the real world than the location-based phenomenon.

But with all that in mind, just how successful has TCG Pocket’s launch really been? Does the Pokémon brand guarantee success, or is there more that the game is getting right? And how has it recaptured the magic of Pokémon Go – and players’ wallets – without pioneering a new genre?

In short, TCG Pocket has struck gold by playing into 90s nostalgia, with an all-important helping of playground rumours.

The lay of the land

TCG Pocket marks the latest Pokémon mobile game in a library that’s grown considerably over the past half-decade – bringing the franchise’s total number of active mobile games to six. It was created collaboratively between The Pokémon Company, physical Pokémon TCG maker Creatures Inc and Pokémon Masters developer DeNA.

Announced on Pokémon Day in February 2024, the title promised to deliver something “only possible digitally” that would appeal to fans of the physical cards, as well as those who had never played before.

The announcement earned DeNA a sudden boost in share price but otherwise went largely under the radar, with relatively little buzz in a year stacked with new mobile releases like Squad Busters, Dungeon & Fighter: Mobile, AFK Journey and Call of Duty Warzone: Mobile.

Even TCG Pocket’s New Zealand soft launch proved a quiet affair this September, earning roughly $15,000 in player spending per day.

Fast-forward to October 30th and all of that changed. Pokémon TCG Pocket released worldwide, making $2.7m gross on launch day, $33.7m in its first week and over $200m in its very first month.

Diving deeper into the data, this means TCG Pocket’s first week was the second strongest in the series’ mobile history, more than doubling Pokémon Masters’ week one revenue. It reached 58% of Go’s week one earnings and beat Tencent’s MOBA Pokémon Unite by more than 700%.

Comparing their first 31 days, TCG Pocket starts to get to Pokémon Go levels, at least by AppMagic estimates. With $202.2m in player spending, the game has gained significant ground against Niantic’s blockbuster and landed just 9% behind its $221.5m.

It’s a feat no other mobile Pokémon title has come anywhere close to achieving, with Go being an irreplicable phenomenon for the series until now. Previous silver medallist Pokémon Masters generated $30.8m in its first month, Pokémon Unite accumulated $13.1m, and Café Remix and Sleep both landed below $10m.

The numbers prove that pairing Pikachu with a mobile game doesn’t mean a guaranteed sensation, suggesting there are other factors at play in turning TCG Pocket into the latest collectible card game craze.

Just one more

Pokémon TCG Pocket’s monetisation model is built predominantly around the digital cards themselves, whether collecting or battling is a player’s main goal.

Every player can open one free pack every 12 hours, with each containing five random cards, incentivising twice-daily log-ins to roll the figurative dice for a fan favourite Pokémon, a meta-defining powerhouse or just something new for the collection.

Capping at two free packs, booting up the game at least once per day is essential to not waste any freebies; and once in, daily missions and time-limited event rewards encourage players to stick around.

Many of these missions and events grant players Pack Hourglasses, a resource used to speed up the clock and open packs that much faster. Players can use 12 in one go to fully skip the pack cooldown or as many as 120 to open 10 packs at once, netting 50 cards immediately.

Of course, more pack openings will likely lead to new deck-building potential and therefore more victories in battle, netting more rewards which, in turn, allow for even more pack openings. It’s a tried and tested formula that appears to be doing wonders so far.

TCG Pocket also launched with a Premium Pass that grants a third “free” pack every day with its own cooldown, plus extra missions which reward yet more Pack Hourglasses.

Subscription services like this are another well-known mobile tactic to encourage regular spending via the renewal of said subscription, meanwhile incentivising frequent play to make the most of this regular payment’s rewards.

Alternatively, players can make one-off payments for the premium currency Poké Gold, which can be used instead of Pack Hourglasses to unlock packs or be exchanged for rare cosmetic items.

In tandem, these options are clearly working to monetise players thus far, but TCG Pocket is far from the only game to implement such a strategy.

It’s not even the only Pokémon game to use a model like this – Pokémon Masters is built around an overt gacha system for pulling new Pokémon and human characters, yet its launch was nowhere near the levels of Pokémon Go and Pokémon TCG Pocket.

Clearly, then, there’s still more setting Go and TCG Pocket apart from the crowd.

“Did you hear about…”

Pokémon Go and TCG Pocket have both been in a position to leverage 90s nostalgia through the power of Pokémon’s branding and have leaned into this advantage much more heavily than Masters, Unite and other games in the series.

Crucially, with over 1,000 Pokémon species to choose from, TCG Pocket launched with just shy of 200. Among them are all 151 classic Kanto Pokémon from the original Game Boy games, Red and Blue.

This was clearly an intended design decision, with these originals making up over 75% of the launch roster and also being the primary subjects of TCG Pocket’s marketing material. The goal of tapping into 90s nostalgia is as overt as can be.

For many millennials who grew up with the Game Boy games these are the most recognisable creatures in the series – including Pikachu, Charizard, Squirtle, Bulbasaur, Mewtwo and more – and they were the same batch of monsters leveraged during Pokémon Go’s launch eight years ago, tapping into the same audience and the same nostalgia.

It’s only natural that this familiarity would encourage them to spend more.

Furthermore, those 90s monsters will also be among the most familiar to younger players who were introduced to the franchise through Go, even further solidifying the originals as the optimal choice for TCG Pocket’s launch roster.

Adding to this, the cards themselves are packed with nostalgia beyond the Pokémon they represent, as many recapture the artwork featured in their original physical card game appearances.

Among the few modern monsters included, TCG Pocket has opted for newer fan favourites like Gardevoir and Greninja, as well as Meltan, one of the only species to debut in Pokémon Go.

TCG Pocket’s sense of nostalgia even expands to its social elements, with a number of secret missions that never reveal themselves or their requirements in-game until they’re completed.

Among their rewards, the current prize is a hidden card featuring Mew, which can’t be obtained from packs. This makes Mew as elusive as it is mysterious, encouraging a modern form of playground rumour – taking place in forums and on social media instead.

Mew was the subject of many myths and rumours in the late 90s, present in the original game’s code but unobtainable through regular gameplay, spawning plenty of theories at the time around how, exactly, one could capture it.

Mew makes a fitting secret in TCG Pocket, therefore, and has now been identified as the reward for pulling all other 150 Kanto Pokémon.

This means that a player wanting to obtain Mew for themselves needs to open many, many packs, demanding plenty of patience or splashing some cash.

Other secret missions were also snuck in in time for launch, spawning further excitement online as fans began to speculate, share their findings and gradually prove or disprove rising theories. This word of mouth can only have helped grow TCG Pocket’s playerbase, with something akin to a community project emerging as a result.

Even the condition of the digital packs themselves has been the subject of playground-style rumours, with some players believing a pack with a bent corner has better odds of containing rare cards. When packs are such a crucial, time-gated resource, picking the right one to open is naturally high on players’ priority lists, but is this theory fuelled merely by confirmation bias or something more?

Believers say that bent packs do indeed have better, but not guaranteed, odds – because why would developers go the extra mile to create these subtle variations otherwise?

Cynics, meanwhile, doubt that a game reliant on microtransactions to find the best cards would willingly point players towards the best in the pile.

TCG Pocket’s social impact is likely only to grow, with trading promised for a future update coming soon. This will make pulling duplicates more rewarding as someone else may not have that second Charizard yet – and may just be willing to trade their second Blastoise for one.

It sounds like the 90s all over again.

Pokémania is back, albeit more digital than ever.

And at its current pace, it won’t be long before Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket becomes the franchise’s second-biggest mobille game out there, with Pokémon Go its only competition.